Medicine: Nobelmen

As far back as 1936 surgeons were working out a way to treat a psychosis by an operation called prefrontal lobotomy—the last resort for schizophrenics and manic-depressives. Using a technique devised by the University of Lisbon’s emeritus professor Dr. Antonio Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz, skilled neurosurgeons cut away important nerve connections in the prefrontal brain lobe (a seat of reasoning) and the thalamus in the rear of the brain (a way station for emotional responses). The operation’s aim: helping the patient to a better adjustment with his environment.

Working in a similar field was a 68-year-old Swiss physiologist, Dr. Walter Rudolph Hess, director of Zurich University’s Physiological Institute. A specialist in the circulatory and nervous systems, Dr. Hess studied the reaction of animals to electric shocks. By applying electrodes to parts of a cat’s brain he was able to make the animal do what it would normally do if it saw a dog, i.e., hiss, etc. By experiments, Dr. Hess was able to determine how parts of the brain control organs of the body.

Last week the Council of the Caroline Institute at the University of Stockholm awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology jointly to Drs. Hess and Moniz. His half of the $30,000 would come in handy to Dr. Hess. Said he: “It will simplify my work. I have certain plans and everything costs money . . . Now I will be able to hire assistants.”

Wealthy, 75-year-old Dr. Moniz, whose hands are badly deformed by long exposure to radioactivity, is the first Portuguese ever to win a Nobel Prize.