Antonio Egas Moniz
Antonio Egas Moniz (1874-1955) 1 was a pioneering Portuguese neurologist that is notable in radiology history for his development of cerebral angiography in 1927.
He is also known as the developer of prefrontal leucotomy (now better known as a lobotomy) for which he received a Nobel Prize in 1949 (shared with Swiss physiologist Walter Rudolf Hess (1881-1973) 1 for his work on the neurophysiology of the diencephalon and its role in the autonomic control of the organs).
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Early life
He was born on 19 November 1874 in Avanca on the Northern coast of Portugal, on his family's ancestral estates. He was christened Antonio Caetano de Abreu Freire. When he was older his godfather, gave him the name Egas Moniz, after a renowned Portuguese patrician, who had once tutored the King of Portugal 2.
He studied medicine at the University of Coimbra, the oldest university in Portugal. He later went to France for postgraduate training in neurology and psychiatry. He returned home in 1911 to head the new department of neurology at the University of Lisbon. He stayed there until until his retirement in 1944.
Development of cerebral angiography
In 1926 he started his experiments on cerebral angiography and presented the results at a conference in Paris in 1927. He was the first person to visualize the vessels of the brain using injected contrast media, key to the development of cerebral angiography. His initial choices of contrast media, lithium and strontium bromide, were both found to be unsuitable due to toxicity, which resulted in the death of a patient. His first successful cerebral angiography was with a 25% solution of sodium iodide as his contrast agent. He was aided in his research by Pedro Almeida Lima (1903-1985), the founder of Portuguese neurosurgery 2,4.
He published two books on cerebral angiography in 1938 and 1940.
Later life
Moniz was a brilliant polymath with interests ranging from mathematics, history, music, painting and writing, to politics.
He was a writer, speaker, and had a distinguished political career beyond medicine, serving as an MP from 1900 and as Portugal's ambassador to Spain. He retired from politics at age 51 (in 1925) in order to more fully pursue research in neurology 2. Other than cerebral angiography, his main research interests were in Parkinson disease, battle trauma neurology, and clinical neurology.
He died on 13 December 1955, at the age of 81, from a catastrophic abdominal hemorrhage.
Legacy
- pioneering work on cerebral angiography
- Egas Moniz Museum and art collection
- numerous books including autobiographical writings
- political contributions
Related Radiopaedia articles
History of radiology
- key milestones
- 1880: Pierre Curie discovered piezoelectricity
- 1895: Wilhelm Roentgen detects x-rays
- 1896: Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity
- 1896: Sydney Rowland founds the first radiology journal, Archives of Clinical Skiagraphy
- 1896: Thomas Edison invents the first commercially-available fluoroscope
- 1896: John Macintyre opens the world's first radiology department in Glasgow
- 1898: Marie Curie publishes her paper 'Rays emitted by uranium and thorium compounds'
- 1913: Albert Salomon commences research leading to mammography
- 1913: William Coolidge introduces his eponymous x-ray tube
- 1927: Egas Moniz develops cerebral angiography
- 1934: Frederic and Irene Joliot-Curie artificially produce radioisotopes
- 1936: John Lawrence uses phosphorus-32 to treat leukemia
- 1939: Kitty Clark publishes Clark’s Positioning in Radiography
- 1950s: David Kuhl invents Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
- 1953: Sven-Ivar Seldinger develops his famous technique
- 1957: Ian Donald invents fetal ultrasound
- 1964: Charles Dotter introduces image-guided intervention
- 1965: Benjamin Felson publishes his Principles of Chest Roentgenology
- 1971: Godfrey Hounsfield introduces the CT scanner (co-developed with Allan Cormack)
- 1977: Ray Damadian builds the first commercial MRI scanner
- 1989: Spiral CT introduced
- 2005: Frank Gaillard creates Radiopaedia.org :)
- 2012: inaugural International Day of Radiology
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key figures in the history of radiology
- Antoine Henri Becquerel
- Gustav Bucky
- Kathleen "Kitty" Clark
- John Wesley Coltman
- William D Coolidge
- Allan M Cormack
- Marie Curie
- Pierre Curie
- Ray V Damadian
- Ian Donald
- Charles T Dotter
- Thomas A Edison
- Charles Thurstan Holland
- Godfrey N Hounsfield
- Frederick Joliot
- Irene Joliot-Curie
- David E Kuhl
- Paul C Lauterbur
- Peter Mansfield
- Egas Moniz
- Bernard Ziedses des Plantes
- Wilhelm C Roentgen
- Sven-Ivar Seldinger
- Albert Soiland
- Florence Stoney
-
important figures in the history of radiology
- Manoel de Abreu
- James Ambrose
- Antoine Béclère
- Eugene W Caldwell
- Ben Felson
- Felix Fleischner
- Ronald Grainger
- Peter Kerley
- Alban Köhler
- John Macintyre
- Philip ES Palmer
- Maurice M Reeder
- Sydney D Rowland
- Albert Salomon
- Robert Steiner
- Juan M Taveras
- William L Thompson
- Ian Young
- Nobel Prize winners in radiology
- history of modalities
- plain radiography
- fluoroscopy
- nuclear medicine
- SPECT
- PET
- ultrasound
- CT
- MRI
- interventional radiology
- historical imaging techniques
- bronchography
- conventional tomography
- pneumoencephalography
- translumbar aortography
- history of radiology journals
- American Journal of Neuroradiology (AJNR)
- American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR)
- American X-Ray Journal
- Archives of Clinical Skiagraphy
- British Journal of Radiology (BJR)
- Clinical Radiology
- Emergency Radiology
- European Radiology
- Journal de Radiologie
- Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR)
- Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Oncology (JMIRO)
- RadioGraphics
- Radiology
- Seminars in Roentgenology
- history of radiology meetings
- history of radiology organizations
- Australia
- United Kingdom
- United States
- international
- Asian Oceanian Society of Radiology (AOSR)
- Colegio Interamericano de Radiologia (CIR)
- European Society of Radiology (ESR)
- Fleischner Society
- International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM)
- International Society of Radiographers and Radiological Technologists (ISRRT)
- International Society of Radiology (ISR)
- RAD-AID
- pioneering radiology books
- Atlas of Normal Roentgen Variants That May Simulate Disease
- Reeder and Felson's Gamuts in Radiology
- Radiographic Atlas of Skeletal Development of the Hand and Wrist
- Roentgenology - The Borderlands of the Normal and Early Pathological in the Skiagram
- The Roentgen Rays in Medicine and Surgery as an Aid in Diagnosis and as a Therapeutic Agent
- Textbook of X-ray Diagnosis by British Authors