This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
One of the big gaps in our knowledge of psychological functioning after psychosurgery has been due to the inclusion of a smaller or larger number of schizophrenic subjects in the patient material. The psychosis in such studies "muddies the waters" so much that egregious errors have been registered. Mrs. Petrie has avoided this type of patient, and from McKissock's very large material has selected 70 neurotic patients for thorough preoperative and postoperative studies. Realizing that one leucotomy may be very different from another, she has also assessed the different types of leucotomy as performed by McKissock, comparing essentially the standard operation (plane of the coronal suture) with the anterior, or rostral, operation, in which the open approach is used, the medial half of the white matter of each frontal lobe severed under direct vision, and the incisions carried 2 cm. anterior to the sphenoidal ridge. A few patients were included