António Egas Moniz

António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz ( born November 29, 1874 in Estarreja, † December 13, 1955 in Lisbon ) was a Portuguese neurologist and politicians. He received in 1949 together with Walter Rudolf Hess received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the discovery of the therapeutic value of prefrontal lobotomy in certain psychoses ".

From 1909 to 1944 Egas Moniz was a professor at the University of Lisbon. In 1917, he was Portuguese ambassador to Spain. From 1918 to 1919 he was Portuguese foreign minister and head of the Portuguese delegation at the Paris Peace Conference.

He developed in 1928 arteriography of cerebral vessels in living people. To this end, he injected contrast agent in the blood of the patient to take pictures of the brain and from the pictures to find tumors. In 1940 he wrote the book The cerebral arteriography and venography.

Egas Moniz was the founder of psychosurgery. 1935 led Moniz, assisted by John Farquhar Fulton on a patient with incurable brain damage, the first lobotomy operation. The nerves are severed in the anterior region of the brain. By the controversial procedure sick were allegedly cured of their delusions, but this did also the personality be changed irreparably. Some affected patients need care and lost their intelligence. Despite a lack of experience in surgery, he pointed out such work on (mostly female ) patients without their consent. Even today, therefore calling clubs, Moniz deprive the Nobel Prize.

On March 14, 1939 Moniz was shot by one of his patients and used a wheelchair from now on. He died in 1955 at the age of 81 years on the farm his family.