Accra — Some ladies are so strong-willed, that they succeed in overpowering their former husbands, to agree to their children being adopted by their new husbands, whilst the old ones are still alive.

Dr. Loyal Davis, a famous World War II Neurosurgeon from Chicago adopted Nancy Robin, who then became Nancy Davis, until she later married the late Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States of America, (they both met in Hollywood, where they are said to have "eked out a career" in acting). This is what you read in Kitty Kelly's book, the "Unauthorized Biography of Nancy Reagan."

Loyal Davis practiced Neurosurgery prior to Hitler's war, and as a young man, went to the Battle front for his country in the Pacific Region, but came back to continue practicing Neurosurgery in Chicago, when it was all over with the war, until his retirement, and death decades later.

Dr. Loyal Davis was among the pioneers of a practice called "Frontal Lobotomy." This procedure is relatively simple for the Neuroscientist, but for the patients, its results could be devastating, when things "should go amiss." I lately met a recently retired African-American of Ghanaian origin, who had read Kitty Kelly's book, and had got himself interested in Neurosurgery, because, one of his son's was born with a malformation, involving the central nervous system.

The boy has been under treatment by a Neurosurgeon in America since decades. In his quest to know more about his son's plight, and in effect, his as well, he had come across such a name, if you will as "Frontal Lobotomy." I was impressed about what he had read, and had retained, about this now abandoned Neuroscience procedure, as a lay-person, even if otherwise, well educated.

A Neuroscientist concerns himself/herself with matters that stand in relation to the nervous system, and this has two components; the central nervous system, (the brain and the spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system, mainly; the nerve roots). The words "central" and peripheral should guide the honorable reader, who may develop interest in this treatise.

Further details may not be of much help. In the frontal (anterior) section of our brain are located, such interesting areas as the limbic system, the cingulate gyrus, and the amygdaloid-body, (anterior to the hypocampus). Some Neuroscientists; Kluever and Bucy at the University of Chicago , and a lot others in Europe a century ago, had observed and documented the behavior of some individuals in relation with lesions in the brain they had carried. Animal experiments done in that direction, by creating ablative lesions in specific areas, had corroborated these observations, prior to World War II. Based on these observations, Neurosurgeons were encouraged to carry out some "ablative procedures" in an attempt to cure people of "some mental disorders."

This practice was designated Psycho-surgery. Aggressive behavior to the point of harming or murdering others, Depression, Psychosis, overly driven sexual trends, etc, would be an indication to consider such a procedure. A little bit of emotional "tinge" is beneficial to us all, but so much of it is a "sickness". In 1947, Edgar Moniz, a Portuguese Neuroscientist, (the father of angiograms) received Nobel Prize for having carried out Lobotomies in "curing mental ailments", some of which have been hinted at above, in this article.

Sensational as it might have been then, ironically, one of his lobotomized patients later shot the Nobel Laureate in the spine, and he lived the rest of his life, with partial paralysis. You would say, "What a cure, and what gratitude!"

That was not the end of fame, with "Frontal Lobotomies". The late Patrick Kennedy, father to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th US President who was assassinated in Dallas , Texas , 23rd November 1963, had as many as nine children. Rosemary was the fifth child among five girls, and she was delivered at the Methodist Hospital in Boston , Massachusetts in the late 20s. It was the hospital for the rich and famous, and hardly anybody was richer and more famous than a Kennedys then. But, ill luck seemed mightier than fame and money, and Rosemary's delivery had some "perinatal complications" which would leave the "prettiest Kennedy-face" with mental handicap, and as it turned out, for ever. Patrick Sr was one time a close friend to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he appointed him Ambassador to St. James Court , prior to World War II.

The presence of a mentally handicapped child among his nine children in England so traumatized the Ambassador, that when he returned to Washington , (apparently having fallen out with his "former friend", the President), he toyed with getting Rosemary undergo Frontal Lobotomy.

After some intense inter-family wrangling, where Patrick Sr almost always won, the final decision was made, that the young girl, sexually mature enough, and with a high risk of embarrassing the family with pregnancy out-side wedlock, should go for the procedure.

They had no problem getting a capable Neuro-scientist from Chicago to undertake the procedure of "Frontal Lobotomy." The result was disastrous. Rosemary was rendered a "social misfit",-a zombie would sound too harsh. Money however, such as the Kennedys possessed always had a solution to all sorts of problems, and this was not to be an exception. Money was allocated from the Kennedys' fortune, to raise a home for the mentally retarded, and to include a special wing for Rosemary Kennedy, where she today, an octogenarian, resides.

The field of Neuroscience, and Neurosurgery are so closely linked to one-another, such that both are almost the same. In both fields, tremendous strides have been made the last half of the 20th century. The development of non-invasive diagnostic tools, such as the CAT-Scan, and Magnetic Resonance Imaging, (the MRI), leave no doubt as to site and size of intra-cranial lesions, and a lot of times, even the nature of an intracranial lesion may be guessed with a fairly high grade of accuracy, (malignant or benign). That aside, Psychopharmacology has put a number of powerful agents at our disposal, that could influence the way we behave, selectively, as well as temporary, (e, g. the Benzodiazepines). The case of the Spanish assailant of Dr. Edgar Moniz, whose mental condition must have been made worse by the Lobotomy Procedure, or the pretty Rosemary Kennedy, who in spite of money and the protection that money could provide, is languishing, and in a "mental home" should be a thing of the past. Ablative procedures such as frontal lobotomies must give way to pharmacological procedures, whose effects either wear off, or can be reversed.

That should be the trend. In other words, receptors have been identified in the brain, which could be pharmacokinetically and specifically influenced, to bring better results than interrupting brain pathways using the knife.