University of Basel; University of Göttingen; University of Berlin; M.D. (1860); habilitation in internal medicine (1862)
Years active
1860–1907
Known for
The first physician to perform modern psychosurgery
Medical career
Profession
Physician
Institutions
G.P., Basel (1860–1862); Physician, Waldau Psychiatric Clinic University of Bern (1875–1882); Privatdozent in Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of Berne (1876–1882); Medical Director of the Préfargier Asylum, Marin, Canton of Neuchâtel (1882–1896); Medical Director Sonnenhalde Clinic, Riehen (1900–1904); Consulting Physician Sonnenhalde Clinic, Riehen (1904–1907)
Sub-specialties
Psychiatry, neurology
Research
Epithelium of the urinary tract, psychosurgery, electrotherapy, aphasia, functional centers of the brain, traumatic hysteria, syphilis
Johann Gottlieb Burckhardt (24 December 1836 – 6 February 1907) was a Swiss psychiatrist and the medical director of a small mental hospital in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel.[1] He is commonly regarded as having performed the first modern psychosurgical operation. Born in Basel, Switzerland, he trained as doctor at the Universities of Basel, Göttingen and Berlin, receiving his medical doctorate in 1860. In the same year he took up a teaching post in the University of Basel and established a private practice in his hometown. He 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. By 1866 he had made a full recovery and returned to Basel with the intention of devoting himself to the study of nervous diseases and their treatment. In 1875, he attained a post at the Waldau University Psychiatric Clinic in Bern, and from 1876 he lectured on mental diseases at the University of Bern. Beginning in this period, he published widely on his psychiatric and neurological research findings in the medical press, developing the thesis that mental illnesses had their origins in specific regions of the brain.
In 1882, he was appointed the medical director of a small, modern, and privately run psychiatric clinic at Marin, in the canton of Neuchâtel, where he was provided with a laboratory to continue his research. In 1888, he pioneered modern psychosurgery when he excised various brain regions from six psychiatric patients under his care. Aimed at relieving symptoms rather than effecting a cure, the theoretical basis of the procedure rested on his belief that psychiatric illnesses were the result of specific brain lesions. He reported the results at a Berlin medical conference in 1889, but the reception of his medical peers was decidedly negative and he was ridiculed. Burckhardt subsequently discontinued his research activities. Following the death of his wife in 1896, Burckhardt returned to Basel, where he established a sanatorium in 1900. He died seven years later from pneumonia.
^Stone, James L. (2001). "Dr. Gottlieb Burckhardt – The Pioneer of Psychosurgery". Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. 10 (1): 79–92. doi:10.1076/jhin.10.1.79.5634. PMID 11446267. S2CID 29727830.
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