ABSTRACT
The original Columbia-Greystone investigation was carried out in the spring and summer of 1947 and the results were reported in detail in 1949 (Columbia Greystone Associates, ’49). A total of 48 patients was studied, 24 each in the original operated and non-operated groups. A variety of procedures was represented among these patients including topectomies of various areas of frontal lobe cortex, venous ligation, (patient no. 38), anaesthesia with phlebotomy (controls), and lobotomies. The latter were performed on 6 patients who had originally been non-operated controls (patients no. 5, 11, 20, 23, 28, and 46) and on 2 patients who had failed to improve after earlier removal of Brodmann’s areas 6, 8, 10, and 47 (patients no. 2 and 44). (A transorbital lobotomy was performed on patient no. 26 in April, 1949 as a part of another study.) Psychiatric follow-up studies were carried out on all patients for one year after the original time of operation with the emphasis being devoted to the patient’s social and vocational status, type and intensity of psychopathology after operation, evidences of undesirable changes in personality structure, and the occurrence of seizures postoperatively. A numerical grading system was devised for the original report to indicate the extent of change in the patient’s social and vocational status insofar as such factors can be expressed numerically from clinical studies.
