Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Lobotomy
/ləˈbɒtəmi/noun
A surgical operation severing connections in the frontal lobe of the brain, once used to treat mental illness.
The Greek roots
λοβός
lobós
lobe, rounded projection
τομή
tomḗ
a cutting
Literally: “cutting the lobe”
The story of the word
Egas Moniz cut the frontal white matter of a patient in Lisbon in 1935 and called it leucotomy; Walter Freeman and James Watts rebuilt the operation in the United States the following year and renamed it lobotomy. λοβός meant the lobe of an ear or a liver long before anyone divided a brain that way. Moniz was given the Nobel Prize in 1949, and the procedure was abandoned within a generation.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1936
Same family
lobeanatomyatomtonsillectomy
In a sentence
The hospital performed lobotomies for a decade and then stopped without comment.
She reads the case notes as a record of what confidence can do.