Leucotomy in the Periodic Psychoses

Abstract

Periodicity as a phenomenon in nature has been known and studied from time immemorial, Astronomy and other sciences have built up a large body of knowledge which goes a long way towards explaining periodicity in the spheres with which they concern themselves. As it appears in the animal kingdom, however, the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon are still largely unrevealed. Of late years the hypothesis has been advanced that many of the periodic happenings in the human economy are subserved by the hypothalamus. Thus menstrual periodicity is held to be due to the hypothalamus acting in conjunction with the endocrine system. This paper is a small contribution to this hypothesis, maintaining as it does that the periodicity observed in certain psychoses is due to the influence of the hypothalamus on the prefrontal cortex. So far no similar report has been made in the large literature dealing with leucotomy and it therefore seemed worth while to give our results in some detail.