Deep in the Brain

To many a thoughtful neurosurgeon, some drastic brain operations now in vogue are "like burning down the house to roast the pig." For two of the operations substitute methods are being suggested in hopes that the same amount of good can be done with less incidental harm.

Lobotomy. Despite many variations (TIME, May 28, 1951), this is still essentially a "blind" operation in which the scalpel (leucotome) makes a series of highly destructive stabs through unoffending brain tissue before the surgeon can feel sure he has cut the nerve bundles that join the thalamus (probably the seat of basic anxiety) to the frontal lobes of the cortex (where anxiety and pain are felt intellectually). Los Angeles' Dr. Tracy J. Putnam has devised a way of driving two hollow needles precisely into the chosen nerve bundles. These are then destroyed by seeds of radon (a radioactive gas) dropped down the needles.

Sample results to date: a highly intelligent woman (130 I.Q.) was afraid to stay at home but even more afraid to go out; since the operation her unreasoning fear has gone, but (unlike many lobotomy cases) she still has her intelligence unimpaired. Of two male schizophrenics, one has gone back to work, the other to college.

Chemopallidectomy. An operation devised by Manhattan's Dr. Irving S. Cooper to relieve the uncontrollable tremor of Parkinson's disease. His earlier method (TIME, June 29, 1953), still risky and controversial, was to shut off one of the brain arteries. But many patients over 55 cannot tolerate this drastic technique, and it is among them that Parkinsonism is commonest. Now, Dr. Cooper works a plastic tube into the grey brain ball, injects procaine (which checks the tremor temporarily) to be sure he has reached the right spot, then injects absolute alcohol to do the job permanently. Of the first few cases, more than half have been freed of tremor and rigidity for many months.

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