Jack_Cole

Pavlov might not have brought his dogs to the conference, but John Fulton from Yale University had brought two chimpanzees. These were the subject of a day long symposium which both Freeman and Moniz attended. Fulton had completely removed the entire frontal lobes from these two animals — a lobectomy — which had radically altered their behavior. He could no longer generate experimental forms of neurosis in the animals. They were seemingly unperturbable. The symposium was fascinated, and the discussion about the significance of the frontal lobes went on and on, as the assembled company hedged gently around the delicate issue that Fulton's chimpanzees raised. Eventually, to much surprise, it was Egas Moniz who stood up and asked the question that Freeman, for one, had been desperate to put.

"If the frontal lobe removal prevents the development of experimental neurosis in animals and eliminates frustrational behavior," he asked, "why would it not be possible to relieve anxiety states in man by surgical means?"

Many attending were shocked to hear it put so frankly; they believed that Moniz was talking about performing the full lobectomy on humans. Freeman, however, was struck by Moniz's courage.