A new paper in a neurosurgery journal sheds light on one of the most bizarre and shocking medical procedures ever invented. The disturbing paper comes from Patric Blomstedt of Sweden's Umeå University.
Blomstedt tells the story of a technique called "cerebral impaludation," which literally means "putting malaria into the brain." In this operation, which was performed on over 1,000 people in the 1930s, blood from a malaria-infected person was injected straight into the frontal lobes of the unfortunate patient.
Why would anyone even dream of such a procedure? The story goes back to 1918, when an Austrian doctor, Julius Wagner-Jauregg, discovered that a bout of malaria could produce improvement in patients with advanced syphilis infection of the brain. Neurosyphilis was otherwise incurable at that time, and led to inevitable dementia, psychosis and death.
Wagner-Jauregg actually won the Nobel Prize for this dangerous, but effective, treatment. (It wasn't quite as dangerous ...
