BRAIN OPERATION TO CURE HOPELESSLY INSANE

Chronicle (Levin), 23 April 1946, Page 2

BRAIN OPERATION TO CURE HOPELESSLY INSANE

NOT NEW DISCOVERY REPORTS MENTAL HOSPITALS HEAD. WELLINGTON, April 22. Serious doubt whether the brain operation reported in a cabte fvom Los Angeles, published on Saturday j as giving kupe for euring hithertd hope1 lessly insane, was really new, was expressed by Dr. T. Grav, Director-Generai of Mental Hospitals, when he was asked tonight to comment ou tne announcement. - Dr. Grav said there had been no reference in recent issues of Psychiatric journals, to the new developments. He doubted whether anv could have taken place beyond the operation known as prefrontal lobotomy, which had been well known in the profession for several years. The operation had been perfonned in hundreds of cases in Europe and America. It was perfonued on two patients at Porirua mental hospita! several years 'ago and since then other patients liad received treatment. Altogether the operation had been perform ed in New Zeaiand about eight times. The object of the operatihn is to sever libres in the brain which are supposed to co-relate the emotions with the intellect. Prefrontal lobotomy was not really a cure, said Dr. Grav, but it stabilised the patient's condition at a lower level than normal. It would be performed only on patients of whotn all hope of a cure by other means had beeu abandou ed. Coniparatively new shot'k .. troat pnents were giving such good resuits that recoverv was occurring in cases for vvliich previouslv no hope had beeu held He had refused permission for a sur gical operation to be performed on several patients for whom it had been suggested, beeause he had not been satisfied that all other treatments had been tried. The operation was not partieularly dangerous to the patient's life. There was no reason why it should be it' carried out properlv, but patients on whom the operation had been performed in other countries, had subsequently died from other causes. Postmortein examination had sliovvu in some of those cases that the surgeon had, by mistake, severed libres he had not intended to sever, yet the effect of the operation had been such that it had been regarded as.suecessful. Those discoveries had throwu doubt on the theorv on whicfi prefrontal lobotomy iLad been based.