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. 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.
Early life and education Gottlieb Burckhardt was born on 24 December 1836 into a well-known family, the Burckhardt, living in the Swiss city of Basel. His father, August Burckhardt (1809–1894), was a physician. His mother was Katharina Jacot (1810–1843) from Montbéliard in France. Burckhardt's parents were married in 1833 and his mother gave birth to seven children prior to her death in 1843. Gottlieb Burckhardt was the third eldest child. In 1844 his father married Henrietta Maria Dick (1813–1871). She had five pregnancies and three surviving children. Burckhardt attended secondary school in Basel. His medical studies were conducted at the Universities of at Basel, Göttingen and Berlin. In 1860 he was conferred with a doctorate in medicine from the University of Basel. His doctoral thesis was on the epithelium of the urinary tract. As a student, he was described as popular, outgoing and musically talented.
Career
Early career, 1860–1888
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