The treatments that were abandoned

The prize was never withdrawn — and cannot be

In 1949 the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute awarded half the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to the Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses". The other half went to Walter Rudolf Hess for unrelated work.

Moniz did not operate: the leucotomies were performed by the neurosurgeon Almeida Lima.

The prize has never been withdrawn — and no Nobel Prize in any category ever has been. The Nobel Foundation's published position is that neither Alfred Nobel's will nor the statutes provide any mechanism for revocation; § 10 states that "no appeals may be made against the decision". Patients' families campaigned for revocation; this was the answer.

Category: Moniz was a neurologist and so was Freeman — the lobotomy was not a psychiatric invention. It was neurological and neurosurgical, applied to psychiatric patients.

[35] Nobel Prize Outreach, 1949 Prize in Physiology or Medicine · Statutes of the Nobel Foundation, § 10 · FAQ: "Is it possible to revoke a Nobel Prize? No."

Bourne demolished nothing. The real story is more interesting.

Manfred Sakel announced insulin coma therapy to the Vienna Medical Society in 1933 and published it in 1934. Patients were held in induced hypoglycaemic coma.

In November 1953 Harold Bourne, then a junior psychiatrist, published "The insulin myth" in the Lancet, arguing that there was no proof of any specific therapeutic effect.

And the profession rejected him. Of fourteen published responses, nine defended insulin and five supported Bourne; William Sargant accused him of selecting his evidence. The treatment continued. It was abandoned only after the randomised comparison by Ackner, Harris and Oldham in 1957 — four years later, and at a point when use was already declining because chlorpromazine had arrived.

We put it this way because this is how it happened. "Demolished" would be a verb stronger than the source. Bourne wrote a critique the profession rejected — and he was right four years before everyone else.

[38] Sakel M, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, 1934 · [39] Bourne H. "The insulin myth", Lancet 1953;265(6793):964-968 · [40] Ackner B, Harris A, Oldham AJ, 1957

Published in the British Medical Journal, not on the fringe

Electrical aversion therapy for homosexuality was not fringe practice. Between 1964 and 1970 the psychiatrist M. J. MacCulloch and the clinical psychologist M. P. Feldman published at least nine papers on it in the British Medical Journal, the American Journal of Psychiatry, the British Journal of Psychiatry, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica and Behaviour Research and Therapy.

Among them: "Aversion therapy in management of 43 homosexuals", BMJ, 3 June 1967.

The method derived from behaviourist learning theory and was delivered jointly by medicine and clinical psychology. The journals that published it are the flagship titles of British and American medicine.

The legal context, without which the picture is incomplete: homosexual acts between men remained a criminal offence in England and Wales until the Sexual Offences Act 1967. Patients arrived at these clinics under threat of prosecution.

[41] MacCulloch MJ, Feldman MP. Br Med J 1967;2(5552):594-597, DOI 10.1136/bmj.2.5552.594, PMID 6025594 · [42] Sexual Offences Act 1967

Why we do not print "3,439"

Walter Freeman — a neurologist, never board-certified in surgery — performed or participated in more than 3,000 prefrontal and transorbital lobotomies from 1936 onward.

A more precise figure, 3,439, is widely quoted. We do not publish it as data. It derives from Freeman's own records via a 2005 trade biography — that is, it originates with a documented self-promoter counting himself — and has never been independently audited against the archive. The only peer-reviewed source we located says "more than 3,000".

Freeman operated on children. The best-documented case is Howard Dully, lobotomised at the age of 12 on 16 December 1960, who has published both his own account and Freeman's case notes, obtained from the archive. We do not repeat the "four years old" that circulates: we found no primary source for it.

[36] Caruso JP, Sheehan JP, Neurosurgical Focus 2017 · [37] El-Hai J, The Lobotomist, 2005 — secondary, a trade biography

"Depatterning" by sleep, electroshock and tape loops: the court record, from 1988 to the 2025 class action

D. Ewen Cameron directed the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill University in Montreal until 1964. He was president of the American Psychiatric Association (1953) and founding president of the World Psychiatric Association — "in terms of his professional associations, he could not have done more", the Cooper report writes. He published the method himself: "psychic driving" in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1956 — the playing of recorded messages to the patient for hours, which "invariably produces responses in the patient, and often intense responses" — and "depatterning" in Comprehensive Psychiatry in 1960: prolonged drug-induced sleep and intensive electroconvulsive treatment aimed, in the paper's own title, at the "production of differential amnesia".

The court record. In 1988 the federal court in Washington, in Orlikow v. United States, recorded: "On March 4, 1957, the CIA approved the Cameron grant as MKULTRA Subproject 68 for the period of time from March 18, 1957 to June 30, 1960. The nine plaintiffs … were patients of Dr. Cameron during the grant period", and "it is undisputed that the plaintiff did not have knowledge of the alleged experimental nature" of the techniques — "however, various forms of consent were given for treatment". The court denied, in its main part, the United States' motion to dispose of the case without trial, and a few months later the CIA settled. The figure in circulation, $750,000, was not found in any primary CIA or US court document — the 2025 Quebec judgment repeats it (§33) citing a secondary source — and we do not print it as fact. What was found is in the CIA's own declassified papers: an internal report of 14 October 1988 that "CIA played a minor role … $60,000 compared to $200,000 funded by the Canadian Government", and a letter from its Director, William Webster, that the case was "settled with a reasonable concern for liability". The Cooper report, below, puts the CIA's funding at $84,820 for 1957–1962; the two documents disagree, and we cite both.

Canada: "no legal or moral responsibility" — and $100,000 to each. The report commissioned by the Canadian government from the lawyer George Cooper (May 1986) concluded that "Cameron's depatterning, psychic driving and related procedures were not based on sound principles of science or medicine" and that, "judging by the standards of today, most psychiatrists would conclude" that depatterning "represented a level of assault on the brain that was not justifiable even by the standards of the time" — conclusions "evident only with the benefit of hindsight", he adds, since no doctor he spoke to would say that Cameron had exceeded the limits of acceptable practice in his day; and at the same time that "the Government of Canada bears no legal or moral responsibility". Six years later, by Order in Council P.C. 1992-2302 of 16 November 1992, the same government approved ex gratia payments of $100,000 to former patients of Cameron who — in the words of the Order's summary in the Orders in Council database; the text of the Order itself was not obtained — "received full or substantial depatterning treatment" at the Allan Memorial between 1950 and 1965; the programme ended on 31 January 1994. Ex gratia means without admission of liability. How many were paid appears only in the pleadings of the present lawsuit and was not verified in a government document.

As of our last check (September 2026). On 31 July 2025 the Superior Court of Quebec, in Tanny et al. v. Royal Victoria Hospital, McGill University and the Attorney General of Canada, authorised a class action for "all persons who underwent depatterning treatment at the Allan Memorial Institute … between 1948 and 1964", their successors and immediate family members. The United States had been excluded as a defendant on grounds of state immunity, by a ruling that became final in 2024. The Quebec Court of Appeal dismissed the hospital's application for leave to appeal on 13 November 2025. Authorisation does not decide the merits: the action is pending, and this page will be updated. And one limit worth stating: the 1977 US Senate hearing on MKULTRA, often presented as the "exposure" of Cameron, does not mention Cameron, Montreal or Subproject 68 even once.

[92] Orlikow v. United States, 682 F. Supp. 77 (D.D.C. 1988) · [93] CIA, DCI Weekly Report, 14.10.1988 · [94] CIA, letter of W. Webster, 28.10.1988 · [95] Cooper G, opinion for the Government of Canada, 1986, pp. 26–27, 95, 127 · [96] P.C. 1992-2302, 16.11.1992 · [97] Tanny c. Royal Victoria Hospital, 2025 QCCS 3590 · [98] Cour d'appel du Québec, 13.11.2025 · [99] Cameron DE, Am J Psychiatry 1956 · [100] Cameron DE, Compr Psychiatry 1960 · [101] US Senate, hearing "Project MKULTRA", 03.08.1977