Sir Wylie McKissock, OBE (27 October 1906 – 3 May 1994) was a British

neurosurgeon Neurosurgery or neurological surgery, known in common parlance as brain surgery, is the medical specialty concerned with the surgical treatment of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord and peri ...

. He set up the neurosurgical unit at the

Atkinson Morley Hospital Atkinson Morley Hospital (AMH) was located at Copse Hill near Wimbledon, South-West London, England from 1869 until 2003. Initially a convalescent hospital, it became one of the most advanced brain surgery centres in the world, and was involved ...

, was Britain's most prolific leucotomist ( lobotomist), and president of the Society of British Neurological Surgeons. McKissock was born in Staines, Surrey. His parents were Alexander Cathie McKissock and Rae Wylie. His father, originally from

Lanarkshire Lanarkshire, also called the County of Lanark ( gd, Siorrachd Lannraig; sco, Lanrikshire), is a historic county, lieutenancy area and registration county in the central Lowlands of Scotland. Lanarkshire is the most populous county in Scotl ...

, was a manager in a linoleum factory who wrote crime fiction under the name of Alan Graham and invented a machine for cutting sheets of material. McKissock went to the

City of London School , established = , closed = , type = Public school Boys' independent day school , president = , head_label = Headmaster , head = Alan Bird , chair_label = Chair of Governors , chair = Ian Seaton , founder = John Carpenter , special ...

and studied medicine at King's College London and St George's Hospital Medical School in London, qualifying in 1930. His first positions were at St George's Hospital,

Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases The Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases was a hospital that existed in west London from 1867 to 1993. History The hospital was founded as the London Infirmary for Epilepsy and Paralysis by the German physician Julius Althaus (1833-1900) in ...

(where he began his neurosurgical career) and

Great Ormond Street Hospital Great Ormond Street Hospital (informally GOSH or Great Ormond Street, formerly the Hospital for Sick Children) is a children's hospital located in the Bloomsbury area of the London Borough of Camden, and a part of Great Ormond Street Hospit ...

. In 1936 McKissock visited Stockholm to study Swedish neurosurgeon

Herbert Olivecrona Axel Herbert Olivecrona (July 11, 1891 – January 1980) was a Swedish professor and brain surgeon, credited with founding the field of Swedish neurosurgery, and pioneering developments in modern neurosurgery. Family, early life and education H ...

's work, and then spent a year (1937-1938) on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. By this time he had a young family, having married Rachel Jones in 1934. The couple had two daughters and a son.B.A. Bell 1996 Wylie McKissock - reminiscences of a commanding figure in British neurosurgery ''British Journal of Neurosurgery'' 10(1): 9-18. In 1939, at the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, McKissock tried unsuccessfully to join the army as a neurosurgeon and instead was appointed to the neurosurgical unit at Leavesden Hospital. The unit later moved to the

Wimbledon, London Wimbledon () is a district and town of Southwest London, England, southwest of the centre of London at Charing Cross; it is the main commercial centre of the London Borough of Merton. Wimbledon had a population of 68,187 in 2011 which includes ...

, and for a time in 1944 was evacuated to Bath, Somerset. McKissock was appointed an OBE in 1946 for his neurosurgical work on casualties with brain injuries during the war. He became a consultant at St George's Hospital and was also given an appointment at the

National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (informally the National Hospital or Queen Square) is a neurological hospital in Queen Square, London. It is part of the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It was the ...

Queen Square, London Queen Square is a garden square in the Bloomsbury district of central London. Many of its buildings are associated with medicine, particularly neurology. Construction Queen Square was originally constructed between 1716 and 1725. It was formed ...

, which was merged with

University College Hospital University College Hospital (UCH) is a teaching hospital in the Fitzrovia area of the London Borough of Camden, England. The hospital, which was founded as the North London Hospital in 1834, is closely associated with University College Lond ...

in the 1990s. Thus at the Atkinson Morley Hospital, which he was to run until his retirement in 1971, he operated on patients from St George's Hospital, Maida Vale Hospital, Great Ormond Street, Queen Square and University College Hospital, as well as accepting referrals from other hospitals. While at the Atkinson Morley Hospital, McKissock developed an extensive practice of psychosurgery, travelling to psychiatric hospitals all over the south of England, Wales and the Midlands. In the 1940s he favoured the standard Freeman-Watts leucotomy where holes were drilled in the side of the head and an instrument swept through the white matter to sever connections between the frontal lobes and the deeper structures in the brain. Here he describes the Freeman-Watts leucotomy and the speed at which he operated:

"This is not a time-consuming operation. A competent team in a well-organised mental hospital can do four such operations in 2-2½ hours. The actual bilateral prefrontal leucotomy can be done by a properly trained neurosurgeon in six minutes and seldom take more than ten minutes."W. McKissock 1951 Rostral leucotomy. ''The Lancet'', 21 July 1951: 91-94

In 1948, in an attempt to reduce the risks and damaging effects of leucotomy, he developed a technique of his own, the rostral leucotomy, where the frontal lobes were approached from the top of the head. He still used the standard Freeman-Watts technique on some patients. By the late 1950s, he had performed about 3,000 leucotomies.W. McKissock 1959 Discussion of Psychosurgery. ''Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine'' 52: 203-10 In 1966, McKissock became president of the Society of British Neurological Surgeons. He was awarded a knighthood on his retirement in 1971, after which he went to live in

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

.Sir Wylie McKissock ''The Times'', 11 May 1994. Following the death of his wife in 1992, Wylie relocated to Brighton to live with his eldest daughter.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McKissock, Wylie 1906 births 1994 deaths People educated at the City of London School Alumni of King's College London 20th-century English medical doctors English neurosurgeons Officers of the Order of the British Empire English people of Scottish descent People from Staines-upon-Thames 20th-century surgeons

See also

References