António Egas Moniz facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Quick facts for kids António Egas Moniz GCSE GCIB

Born	António Caetano de Abreu Freire de Resende (1874-11-29)29 November 1874 Avanca, Estarreja, Portugal
Died	13 December 1955(1955-12-13) (aged 81) Lisbon, Portugal
Nationality	Portuguese
Alma mater	University of Coimbra
Known for	Cerebral angiography Moniz sign Prefrontal leucotomy
Spouse(s)	Elvira de Macedo Dias (m. 1901; ~~her death~~ 1945)
Awards	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1949
Scientific career
Fields	Neurologist
Institutions	University of Coimbra (1902); University of Lisbon (1921–1944)



Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office 8 October 1918 – 30 March 1919
Prime Minister	Sidónio Pais (de facto) João do Canto e Castro (acting) João Tamagnini Barbosa José Relvas
Preceded by	Joaquim do Espírito Santo Lima
Succeeded by	Rodolfo Xavier da Silva
Ambassador of Portugal to Spain
In office 4 March 1918 – 10 October 1918
Nominated by	Sidónio Pais
Preceded by	Augusto de Vasconcelos
Succeeded by	Manuel Teixeira Gomes

António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz (29 November 1874 – 13 December 1955), known as Egas Moniz, was a Portuguese neurologist. He was famous for developing a way to see blood vessels in the brain using X-rays, called cerebral angiography.

He is also known as one of the founders of modern psychosurgery. He developed a surgery called leucotomy, which is now better known as lobotomy. For this work, he became the first Portuguese person to win a Nobel Prize in 1949. He shared the prize with another scientist, Walter Rudolf Hess.

Egas Moniz held important jobs at universities. He also wrote many medical articles. Besides his medical career, he served in the Portuguese government as a politician and diplomat. In 1911, he became a professor of neurology in Lisbon. He worked there until he retired in 1944.

Early Life and Education
Political Career
Medical Research
- Seeing the Brain: Cerebral Angiography
- Brain Surgery: Prefrontal Leucotomy
Writing Career
Later Life and Death
Legacy
Distinctions
- National Awards
- Foreign Awards
See Also

Early Life and Education

António Caetano de Abreu Freire de Resende was born in Avanca, Portugal, on November 29, 1874. He went to school at Escola do Padre José Ramos and a Jesuit school called College of Saint Fidelis.

He studied medicine at the University of Coimbra and finished his degree in 1899. For the next 12 years, he taught basic medical courses at Coimbra. In 1911, he became a professor of neurology at the University of Lisbon. He taught there until he retired in 1944.

His uncle and godfather, Father Caetano, believed their family was related to a famous medieval nobleman named Egas Moniz o Aio. Because of this, he convinced the family to change António's last name to Egas Moniz.

Political Career

Egas Moniz was interested in politics from a young age. He supported a republican government, which was different from his family who supported the monarchy. As a student, he was arrested twice for joining protests. Later, when he was the Dean of the Medical School at the University of Lisbon, he was arrested again. This happened because he stopped the police from breaking up a student protest.

Moniz's official political career began in 1900 when he was elected to parliament. During World War I, he was Portugal's Ambassador to Spain. After that, in 1917, he became the Minister for Foreign Affairs. In 1918, he led the Portuguese group at the Versailles Peace Conference. He left politics in 1919 after a disagreement that led to a duel.

Medical Research

Seeing the Brain: Cerebral Angiography

Portrait of Egas Moniz in his university robes, 1932, by José Malhoa.

In 1926, when he was 51, Moniz stopped working in politics and went back to medicine full-time. He had an idea: if doctors could see the blood vessels in the brain using X-rays, they could find brain tumors more accurately.

To do this, Moniz injected special dyes that show up on X-rays into brain arteries. Then he took X-ray pictures to see if there were any problems. In his first tries, he used different chemicals. One patient sadly died, and the experiments didn't work well. But after more attempts, he found success using a solution called 25% sodium iodide. He used it on three patients and created the first successful cerebral angiogram.

Moniz shared his discoveries in Paris in 1927. He was the first person to successfully take X-ray pictures of the brain using these special substances. Before him, scientists had only been able to see parts of the body outside the brain. His work helped doctors use angiography to find blocked arteries in the brain. He was even nominated for two Nobel Prizes for this work.

Brain Surgery: Prefrontal Leucotomy

Moniz believed that some mental illnesses came from unusual connections in the front part of the brain, called the frontal lobe. He thought that in mental illness, certain ideas could get "stuck" in the brain's connections.

He also learned about experiments where scientists removed parts of a chimpanzee's frontal lobes. This made the chimpanzee calmer. Moniz also noticed that soldiers who had injuries to their frontal lobes sometimes had changes in their personality.

Based on these ideas, Moniz thought that surgically removing some of the white matter fibers from the frontal lobe might help people with mental illness. He asked his colleague, neurosurgeon Almeida Lima, to try this surgery on 20 patients. These patients mostly had conditions like schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression.

The first surgery was done in 1935 on a 63-year-old woman with severe depression and other issues. She recovered quickly physically. Two months later, a doctor noted she was calmer and less paranoid. In the first group of surgeries, Moniz reported that seven patients were "cured," seven improved, and six stayed the same.

Moniz himself never performed the surgery. This was partly because he wasn't trained as a neurosurgeon. Also, he had limited use of his hands due to a condition called gout. Lima performed the first ten surgeries by injecting alcohol to destroy parts of the frontal lobe. Later, Moniz and Lima created a new tool called a leucotome. It was a needle-like tool with a wire loop that could be rotated to cut the white matter fibers.

Moniz believed the results were good for the first 40 or so patients. He said that "Prefrontal leukotomy is a simple operation, always safe, which may prove to be an effective surgical treatment in certain cases of mental disorder." He also thought that any changes in behavior or personality were worth it if the illness became less severe. He did admit that patients who were already very sick didn't get much benefit.

This surgery became popular for a short time. In 1949, Moniz received the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the "therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses."

However, some critics said that Moniz didn't fully report the problems that could happen. They also said he didn't keep good enough records or follow up with patients. Other doctors, like Walter Jackson Freeman II and James W. Watts in the United States, changed the technique and called it "lobotomy."

Writing Career

Egas Moniz was a very active writer. He wrote about Portuguese literature and published two books about his own life. He also wrote biographies of other important Portuguese figures, like physician Pedro Hispano Portucalense and hypnotist José Custódio de Faria.

In medicine, Moniz published 112 articles and 2 books just on angiography. He also wrote about brain injuries from war, Parkinson's disease, and other topics in neurology.

Later Life and Death

In 1939, Moniz was shot several times by a patient. After this, he used a wheelchair. He continued to work in his private medical practice until 1955. Egas Moniz passed away on December 13, 1955, from internal bleeding.

Legacy

Egas Moniz on a 1989 Portuguese banknote.

After Moniz's death, new antipsychotic medications were developed. These new medicines made leucotomies (lobotomies) much less common. By the end of the 20th century, Moniz's legacy was seen in a mostly negative light. The surgery was often viewed as an old, experimental procedure.

Some experts, like psychologist Elliot Valenstein and neurologist Oliver Sacks, were very critical of Moniz's methods and his Nobel Prize. There have even been calls to take away his Nobel Prize, especially from families of patients who had the surgery. However, others defend Moniz, saying that his work should be understood in the context of the time he lived.

In his home country of Portugal, Egas Moniz is still highly respected. His image has appeared on banknotes and postage stamps. There is a statue of him outside the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Lisbon. His country house in Avanca is now a museum.

In 2020, a TV movie called O Ego de Egas ("The Ego of Egas") was made by RTP2, a Portuguese TV channel. This movie explores Moniz's work and his reasons for doing it.