Chapter 10: Chipped
Summary
This chapter talks about the founding father of lobotomy - António Egas Moniz. Slater describes his discovery and how we won the Nobel Prize in 1949. Egas Moniz was in a neurology conference when two researchers claimed that after they cut a bad attitude monkey's fibers connecting the frontal lobe to the limbic system, the monkey started behaving correctly. During the conference, Egas Moniz stood up and proposed to do the same to humans.
Discussion
Even though it might have been strangely and unethical to hear about the birth of lobotomy, the numbers could clearly show that he was heading in the right path. According to the chapter, about 65% of the patients treated with a lobotomy showed some sort of improvement in behavior. Even though the chapter also claims that some people did not like Egas Moniz because he chose his patients, how could anyone criticize him when this was something that could potentially help neurology.
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