Psychosurgery and the involuntarily confined.

Constitutional law--an involuntarily detained mental patient's informed consent is invalid for experimental psychosurgery.

Psychosurgery as Brain - disabling Therapy

Psychosurgery merits special attention because, as the prototype of braindamaging therapeutics, it can shed light on the clinical effects of otl1er braindisabling treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and the major tranquilizers. Despite the paucity of active practitioners and advocates of psychosurgery, many psychiatric authorities have condoned this treatment precisely because th...

The involuntarily confined mental patient and informed consent to psychiatric treatment.

Gottlieb Burckhardt and Egas Moniz--two beginnings of psychosurgery.

This article compares the repercussions of the two attempts at psychosurgery, the first in 1888 by the Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt and the second by the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz. Both widely publicised their procedure, yet, Burckhardt was condemned and no one ventured to repeat his operation, whereas Moniz's leucotomy was accepted and it soon entered mainstream psychiatry. T...

Psychosurgery: past, present, and future.

Psychosurgery, the neurosurgical treatment of psychiatric disease, has a history dating back to antiquity, and involves all of the clinical neurosciences. This review discusses the history of psychosurgery, its development in the 19th century, and the conditions of its use and abuse in the 20th century, with a particular focus on the frontal lobotomy. The transition to the modern era of psychos...