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Post by madeline on Jul 26, 2017 14:10:51 GMT -5
When I saw today's Thought for the Day, it reminded me that this was the day that she died. Recently, I saw the "Evita" movie with Faye Dunaway and it was a lot better than the one with Madonna, even though Faye Dunaway didn't look anything like Evita.
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Post by jane on Jul 26, 2017 17:24:31 GMT -5
I saw the play "Evita" several years ago at a local theater. Some of the actors and actresses were good, but I'm sure it was nothing like the Broadway production.
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Post by LostLenore on Aug 18, 2018 0:15:01 GMT -5
I just started reading a biography of Eva Peron.
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Post by kitty on Aug 18, 2018 20:25:33 GMT -5
I wonder if she wanted to be preserved forever or if that's something her husband wanted so that he could still benefit from her popularity with the people?
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Post by Graveyardbride on Jul 26, 2023 7:39:22 GMT -5
Was Evita Subjected to a Prefrontal Lobotomy?A few weeks before her death on July 26, 1952, Eva Perón, her frail body wrapped in mink against the cold, rode through the streets of Buenos Aries next to her husband for his second inauguration as President of Argentina. By this time, she was so ravaged by cancer that it is rumored a special support constructed of plaster and wire was necessary for her to stand. Always pleasingly plump, unless she had been rigorously dieting, by this point, she weighed no more than 80 pounds.
Although she was suffering from cervical cancer and had undergone a hysterectomy in November 1951, 11 years ago, Dr. Daniel E. Nijensohn, a neurosurgeon at Yale University Medical School, claimed the First Lady of Argentina had been subjected to something so horrible it never made it into any of the books about her life, or Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical. “In addition to pain and sorrow, the story is full of lies, deceit, secrets and misinformation,” he wrote in a Neurosurgical Focus article. According to the physician’s theory, the man beside her, the man who had benefited most from her carefully contrived popularity with the people, was responsible for her rapid decline by forcing her to subject to a prefrontal lobotomy. The operation, which involves cutting the neural connections between the prefrontal lobes and the remainder of the brain, is intended to numb emotional response. According to Nijensohn, Evita’s operation had been a deep, dark secret until 2011, when he obtained scans of her skeleton after death, which included, among other things, X-ray images of her skull that revealed signs of drilling.
One possibility, of course, is that the lobotomy had been nothing more than a radical measure to manage the ever-increasing pain of the spreading cancer. While the procedure wouldn’t have necessarily eradicated the pain itself, a reduced emotional response may have helped her cope with the misery. Nonetheless, based on information uncovered during his investigation, Nijensohn concluded the operation could have been a last-ditch effort on the part of Juan Perón to curb his wife’s increasingly erratic, incendiary and dangerous behavior. “It offered the perfect approach to ‘calm’ Evita and prevent a civil war, while also attempting to dull her response to cancer pain,” he said in his article.
As First Lady, Evita was in charge of many of the nation’s social policies, however, by the early 1950s, many were beginning to question the efficacy of the Perón government, and the military, in particular, was growing tired of Eva’s influence. Always ruthless and quick to react when anyone dared cross her, she had become even more vindictive and volatile in her demands, one of which was to be named vice president. Nijensohn wrote:
“Her last public speech, delivered on May 1, 1952, Labor 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.’”
This was much more than the mad rantings of a woman wracked by pain and desperation. Allegedly, without her husband’s knowledge, from her sick bed, she ordered 5,000 automatic pistols and 1,500 machine guns, with the intention of arming her descamisados to form workers’ militias. This would have angered both the military and conservative members of the government and, according to Nijensohn, could have resulted in civil war.
Once again, Perón was ordered by high-ranking government officials to control his wife, and Nijensohn believes he learned of, or someone suggested, an operation that had been utilized in the United States to control aggression and impulsive violence.
After reviewing Evita’s medical records, the Yale doctor contacted acquaintances of her neurosurgeon, James L. Poppen of the Lahey Clinic in Boston, and it is his contention these individuals confirmed his suspicions. Manena Riquelme, one of Poppen’s nurses, even claimed the operation proceeded without the First Lady’s consent. Doctors, she said, created a make-shift operating theater in a back room of the presidential home, where the security was so tight an armed guard was present during the surgery. Another disturbing detail of her account is that Poppen had initially practiced the lobotomy on Buenos Aires prisoners at Juan Peron’s request, an indication he wasn’t trying to kill his wife.
The operation was successful because Evita didn’t die, but according to Nijensohn, it hastened her decline and ultimate death. Following the procedure, he wrote, she stopped eating, and Poppen’s acquaintances said the physician later regretted his involvement in an operation that, in effect, made bad matters worse.
After the passage of more than 70 years, no one will ever know, with absolute certainty, what motivated Perón to subject his wife to such an invasive, dangerous and untested procedure. While Nijensohn’s theory is interesting, assuming there was such a surgery, had Perón’s sole motive been to “control” his wife’s inflammatory speech and attempts to arm the workers, he, through her doctors, could have done so with drugs. The president had no medical training and many have claimed he wasn’t necessarily the sharpest tool in the shed. Accordingly, he likely heard of a surgical procedure that could possibly relieve his wife’s cancer-related suffering in her final days, consulted her physicians, and was convinced it might help her.
Sources: David Robson, The BBC, July 10, 2015; Journal of Neurosurgery, July 2015; National Library of Medicine; Evita - First Lady by John Barnes, and Eva, Evita: The Life and Death of Eva Perón by Paul L. Montgomery.
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Post by snowfairy on Jul 26, 2023 9:20:19 GMT -5
Both of these articles are very good, and I agree that if the goal was to control what Evita was saying and doing, drugs would have been a lot easier than a lobotomy. If it was done, it was to control her pain, although, by that time, the doctors should have known that she wasn't going to live but a few weeks, and undergoing the surgery probably shortened her life.
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Post by pat on Jul 26, 2023 12:29:18 GMT -5
I saw something online a few years ago about her having a lobotomy but I didn't pay any attention to it because I thought it was just some far out theory. But if Peron was the one who made the decision, I'm sure he did it to help with her pain rather than for any other reason. There was morphine and all sorts of drugs available in the 50s that could have kept her doped up if she was saying things he didn't want her to say.
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Post by catherine on Jul 26, 2023 19:56:39 GMT -5
I seriously doubt she had a lobotomy, but if one was performed, it would have been for the pain, not because Peron -- even though he was a selfish bastard -- wanted to control her speech. She was more popular than he was, he was still benefiting from her popularity, and I don't think he would have risked killing her when he could have had the doctors achieve the same thing with drugs. Also, she had a mother, a brother and several sisters who were always around, so if Peron was doing something like having a secret lobotomy performed, they would have known and either told Evita or broadcast what he was doing to the public.
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Post by pat on Jul 27, 2023 9:00:35 GMT -5
I seriously doubt she had a lobotomy, but if one was performed, it would have been for the pain, not because Peron -- even though he was a selfish bastard -- wanted to control her speech. She was more popular than he was, he was still benefiting from her popularity, and I don't think he would have risked killing her when he could have had the doctors achieve the same thing with drugs. Also, she had a mother, a brother and several sisters who were always around, so if Peron was doing something like having a secret lobotomy performed, they would have known and either told Evita or broadcast what he was doing to the public. |
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Post by Kate on Jul 28, 2023 16:54:29 GMT -5
Didn't her brother commit suicide a few months after she died? |
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Post by Graveyardbride on Jul 29, 2023 6:51:08 GMT -5
Didn't her brother commit suicide a few months after she died? |
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Post by serena on Jul 30, 2023 15:47:39 GMT -5
So what happened to Isabel, the 3rd wife?
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Post by catherine on Jul 26, 2024 8:59:34 GMT -5
So what happened to Isabel, the 3rd wife? |
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