21 Facts About Gottlieb Burckhardt

Johann Gottlieb Burckhardt was a Swiss psychiatrist and the medical director of a small mental hospital in the Swiss canton of Neuchatel.

Gottlieb Burckhardt is commonly regarded as having performed the first modern psychosurgical operation.

Gottlieb Burckhardt married in 1863 but the following year he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and gave up his practice and relocated to a region south of the Pyrenees in search of a cure.

Gottlieb Burckhardt reported the results at a Berlin medical conference in 1889, but the reception of his medical peers was decidedly negative and he was ridiculed.

Gottlieb Burckhardt was born on 24 December 1836 into a well-known family, the Burckhardt, living in the Swiss city of Basel.

Gottlieb Burckhardt's mother was Katharina Jacot from Montbeliard in France.

Gottlieb Burckhardt's parents were married in 1833 and his mother gave birth to seven children prior to her death in 1843.

In 1864, due to a diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis, Gottlieb Burckhardt was forced to give up his practice and he relocated to a southern locale near the Pyrenees.

Gottlieb Burckhardt recovered fully and published a study of climatic conditions in the region.

In 1866 Gottlieb Burckhardt returned to Basel and resolved to study the diseases of the nervous system and their treatment with the new electrotherapies.

Gottlieb Burckhardt drew inspiration for his hypothesis from recent advances which had shown the localisation of language faculties in the brain and he believed that mental diseases were traceable to specific cortical centres.

Gottlieb Burckhardt continued to publish on psychiatric and neurological topics such as cerebral vascular movements, brain tumours and optic chiasm, traumatic hysteria, and writing disorders.

In December 1888 Gottlieb Burckhardt, who had little experience of surgery, performed what are commonly regarded as the first series of modern psychosurgical operations.

Gottlieb Burckhardt operated on six patients under his care, two women and four men aged between 26 and 51 whose condition was deemed to be intractable.

The theoretical basis of Gottlieb Burckhardt's action rested on three propositions.

Gottlieb Burckhardt attended the Berlin Medical Conference of 1889, which was attended by such heavyweight psychiatrists as Victor Horsley, Valentin Magnan and Emil Kraepelin, and presented a paper on his brain operations.

Gottlieb Burckhardt published the results of the procedure in 1891 in the periodical Allgemeine Zeitschrift fur Psychiatrie und psychischgerichtliche Medicin in an article entitled 'Uber Rindenexcisionen, als Beitrag zur operativen Therapie der Psychosen'.

Dr Gottlieb Burckhardt has a firm faith in the view that the mind is made up of a number of faculties, holding their seats in distinct portions of the brain.

Gottlieb Burckhardt defends himself from the criticisms which are sure to be directed against his bold treatment by showing the desperate character of the prognosis of the patients upon whom the operations were performed.

Gottlieb Burckhardt served as the clinic's medical director from 1900 until 1904 and he remained a physician at the facility until his death from pneumonia on 6 February 1907.

Gottlieb Burckhardt was a marginal figure within the professional community of his psychiatric peers, attending few medical symposia and conferences in his discipline.