Turkish Neurosurgery 2009 , Vol 19 , Num 3
The History of Psychosurgery in Turkey
Oğuzhan ZAHMACIOĞLU1, Gülten DİNÇ2, Sait NADERİ3
1Yeditepe University Hospital, Pediatric Psychiatry Department, Istanbul, Turkey
2Istanbul University, Cerrahpaşa School of Medicine, Deontology and History of Medicine Department, Istanbul, Turkey
3Ümraniye Training and Research Hospital, Neurosurgery Department, Istanbul, Turkey
The modern age of psychosurgery can be said to have started with Moniz and Lima. Freeman and Watts subsequently revised and popularised the lobotomy procedure. Moniz shared the 1949 Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses, which accelerated the worldwide popularisation of lobotomy, particularly during the years from 1948 to 1953. In Turkey, psychosurgical interventions were first performed in the early 1950s, and were applied in almost 400 cases. These operations gradually ceased after the discovery and worldwide clinic applications of a modern antipsychotic drug named Chlorpromazine in 1950s, paralleling a similar trend in other countries. Our paper reviews the clinical, psychometric and histopathological results of psychosurgery performed in Turkey in the 1950s. Keywords : History, Lobotomy, Psychosurgery, Turkey
Corresponding author : Oğuzhan Zahmacıoğlu, ozahmacioglu@yahoo.com