Patients with Huntington’s disease pioneered human stereotactic neurosurgery 70 years ago

It is well known that stereotactic functional neurosurgery, using ablative procedures or deep brain stimulation (DBS) is used mainly in the surgical treatment of Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor and dystonia. These are also the only established indications for functional stereotactic neurosurgery. What is less well known is that the first ever stereotactic operation was performed 70 years ago, and was for treatment of Huntington’s disease. This historical account will review the birth of human stereotactic surgery, and it’s very first applications.Stereotaxis (from the Greek stereo meaning solid or spatial, and taxis meaning arrangement) is a surgical method first described for experimental animal use by Sir Victor Horsley and Dr Robert Clarke in a paper in 1908 published in Brain with the title ‘The structure and functions of the cerebellum examined by a new method’ (Horsley and Clarke, 1908). It took almost 40 years before this method was applied in humans.