Meanwhile in Umea
On the 10th of December 1949 Nobel prizewinners and dignatories sat down for the Nobel Banquet at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm (Egas Moniz was not present as ill-health had prevented him travelling from Portugal). They listened to a speech by Carl Skottsberg, President of the Royal Academy of Sciences, in which he expressed gratitude and admiration for Egas Moniz and said: "Today his method is practised everywhere with very good results".
Two hundred and fifty miles north in the town of Umea, 35 patients at the local mental hospital, Umedalens Hospital, had already died as a result of lobotomy. Doctors there started operating in 1947 and by the end of 1949 had carried out 279 operations, with a 12.5 per cent mortality rate.* Umedalens Hospital would go on to do more lobotomies than any other hospital in Sweden. Children as young as four were operated on. One seven year old died following a lobotomy.
* These figures come from an article by Kenneth Ogren and others, which was published in the Swedish medical journal Lakartidningen in 2000.
Two hundred and fifty miles north in the town of Umea, 35 patients at the local mental hospital, Umedalens Hospital, had already died as a result of lobotomy. Doctors there started operating in 1947 and by the end of 1949 had carried out 279 operations, with a 12.5 per cent mortality rate.* Umedalens Hospital would go on to do more lobotomies than any other hospital in Sweden. Children as young as four were operated on. One seven year old died following a lobotomy.
* These figures come from an article by Kenneth Ogren and others, which was published in the Swedish medical journal Lakartidningen in 2000.
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