Nobel Prize Recipient. Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist, received world-wide acclaim after receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. According to the Nobel Prize committee, he received this coveted award "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses." He discovered that a frontal lobectomy of the brain would change a person's abnormal personality. He received 18 nominations for the Nobel candidacy, one was from Walter Freeman, an American surgeon, who perform lobectomy surgery. He shared the award with Swiss physiologist, Walter Rudolf Hess, who successfully mapped the areas of the brain involved with certain control of internal organs. In 1927 Moniz first introduced the cerebral arteriography to study blood flow through the brain; being before brain scans, this was the sole diagnostic procedure for the brain. Born António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz, his ancestor was allegedly Egas Moniz de Riba Douro, a Portuguese nobleman of the 12th century. He credits his uncle in his education prior to entering the Faculty of Medicine at Coimbra University in Portugal. In 1899, at the age of 25, Moniz received his MD degree, with honors. Going to France, he received further education at Bordeaux and Paris studying neurology and psychiatry. He became a Professor at Coimbra University in 1902. The same year, he married Elvira de Macedo Dias. In 1911 he transferred to the newly formed post of Chairman in Neurology at Lisbon University where he remained until his retirement in 1944. He also worked for a time as a physician in the Hospital of Santa Maria in Lisbon. In 1903, his political career began after being elected to the office of a Deputy in the Portuguese Parliament, serving until 1917. During World War I, he became the Portuguese Ambassador to Spain. Later in 1917, he was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs and in 1918 was President of the Portuguese Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. He retired from politics in 1919 with a duel after a disagreement over a political matter. By 1925 he had a full-time medical practice. In 1932, he received several gunshot wounds from a schizophrenic patient's gun, leaving him wheelchair bound the rest of his life. Early in the 20th century a Russian surgeon had performed three unsuccessful lobectomies on mental hospital inpatients. Using Moniz' instructions, the first successful frontal lobectomy was performed by a close colleague on November 12, 1935 on a 63-year-old woman suffering depression, anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations, and manic behavior. Moniz was physically unable to perform the surgery himself with his medical limitations of being wheelchair bound and severe gout in his hands. Reports from the first twenty surgeries state that 66% of the patients either improved or were cured. He was a prolific author, publishing works in Portuguese literature, sexology, two autobiographies, many medical textbooks, a book on card playing and one on politics. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received the Legion of Honor from France, Order of the Crown from Italy, and the Order of Isabella the Catholic from Spain. He died from an internal hemorrhaging. His art collection is on display at his country house in Avanca and his museum is located at Coimbra University. Brain lobectomies were very common in the United States and Western Europe to treat mental illness with severe symptoms, yet by the 1960s the procedure fell out of favor as a few patients had the complication of "surgically induced childhood." At that point, there was criticism about Moniz receiving the Nobel Prize for a "medical barbaric" procedure and abusing the patient's rights. By this time, other treatments, such as improved pharmaceutical therapies, replaced the drastic procedure. By the 21st Century with much more controlled surgical procedures, patients with uncontrolled epilepsy have elected to have lobectomies of the anterior temporal lobe of the brain at major medical centers with specialist performing the surgery.