The way the official story goes, "Evita" died on 26 July 1952 of cervical cancer. A few weeks before she died, Eva Peron rode next to her husband for his second inauguration as President of Argentina. Her cervical cancer, it is said, had rendered her so weak, and her limbs so frail, that she was only able to stand inside a plaster and wire cage. She weighed only 80 pounds.
At least, that was the official story. But now, according to a fascinating article by David Robson on the BBC News website, Dr. Daniel Nijensohn, a neurosurgeon at the Yale Medical School, has a different and controversial theory as to what really caused Eva Peron's death.
In his recent paper, "Prefrontal lobotomy on Evita was done for behavior/
personality modification, not just for pain control", the good doctor claims that it was the man beside Evita in the limo -- Juan Peron himself -- who was responsible for Eva's rapid decline. How so? According to Dr. Nijensohn he forced her to undergo a lobotomy.
The operation involves cutting the neural connections between the prefrontal lobes and the rest of the brain, in order to numb emotional responses. The now-discredited surgery was widely used for decades as treatment for schizophrenia, manic depression and bipolar disorder, among other mental illnesses. If you're not sure what effect it has on the patient, check out the penultimate scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
It wasn't until 2011 that Dr. Nijensohn was able to obtain scans of Eva Peron's skeleton, which disclosed, among other things, X-ray images of her skull showing signs it had been drilled into. But why? One possibility is that the lobotomy had been a radical measure to help her endure the pain of her cancer. But the doctor suggests another motive. The operation, he writes, may have been President Peron's last desperate attempt to curb his wife's increasingly dangerous behaviour. "It offered the perfect approach to 'calm' Evita and prevent a civil war...."
As Argentina's First Lady, [David Robson writes] Sra Peron was in charge of many of the country's social policies, but, as Evita suggests, had made numerous enemies within the government and without. Perhaps fired by the anxiety and pain of cancer, her rhetoric had become increasingly incendiary towards those who dared to disagree with her.
Dr. Nijensohn tells us: "Her last public speech, delivered on May 1, 1952, Labour Day in Argentina, was a call against her enemies. She also dictated a 79-page document, 'My Message', showing evidence of her belligerence and violent state of mind. She spoke about the 'enemies of the people' who were 'insensitive and repugnant', and 'as cold as toads and snakes'. She exalted the 'holy fire of fanaticism'. She was 'against those imbeciles' who called for prudence. She ordered the people of Argentina to 'fight the oligarchy'."
Dangerous stuff indeed. Even Hellery Clinton couldn't get away with talking like that, could she? It must have seemed obvious to the President that if her threats had been made good -- she had allegedly ordered 5000 automatic pistols and 1500 machine guns with which to arm "workers' militias" -- Argentina could have soon descended into civil war.
So, what to do? Lobotomy had already gained notoriety in the USA as a measure to treat uncontrollable aggression and impulsive violence. Perhaps that was the answer. Acquaintance of Sra Peron's surgeon, Dr. James Poppen, told Dr. Nijensohn that the operation was performed in a back room of the Casa Rosa, -- without Evita’s consent.
In the end [David Robson again], the operation did succeed in silencing Evita, if only by accelerating her decline. After the lobotomy, she simply stopped eating. "The possibility of a conspiracy" David Robson writes, "adds another, tragic chapter to the life of a colourful and controversial figure who continues to fascinate more than six decades after her death."
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