In 1935, António Egas Moniz and surgeon Pedro Almeida Lima drilled two holes in a patient’s head and injected pure ethyl alcohol into the prefrontal cortex. They used the alcohol to disrupt nerve tracts that potentially supported repeated patterns of thought in mentally ill patients. Moniz later designed a leukotome, an instrument meant to disrupt fibers connecting the prefrontal cortex and the thalamus. The results of the procedures they performed in nearly 40 patients were mixed.
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