Egas Moniz was a Portuguese neurosurgeon who is best remembered for his contributions to the neurosurgery of the human psyche. He received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1949 along with Walter Hess, a Swiss physiologist. This prize was accorded for their development of prefrontal leucotomy, a brain operation for the treatment of certain mental disorders. Since those early days, medications have thankfully supplanted the need for brain surgery in the management of severe psychiatric brain disorders.

A more important legacy was his introduction of cerebral arteriography. His authorship is largely forgotten but arteriography remains his most important contribution. In the early years of neurosurgery. the localization of brain abnormalities was accomplished by neurological examination and skull x-rays. Walter Dandy introduced pneumoenecphalography, the injection of air into the spinal and cerebral cerebrospinal fluid pathways as a way of   outlining the brain and its interior. These primitive methods remained the only method of localizing brain abnormalities until arteriography. Fifty years later CT and MRI scanning can accurately visualize intracranial pathology. Arteriography continues as a method of diagnosis , and now a method for treatment. Injection of dye into cerebral arteries and veins can outline pathological conditions. Injection of material through these intravascular catheters can also treat many of these intracranial conditions. Professor Moniz deserves a second Nobel Prize!