Eva Perón was given lobotomy to ease her pain, says study

A study published Tuesday in Argentina concluded that Eva Perón was given a lobotomy in 1952 to ease her suffering as she was dying of cancer.

Daniel Nijensohn, an Argentinean neurosurgeon and professor at Yale University, said his investigation began in 2005 after a Hungarian neurosurgeon, George Udvarhelyi, revealed in a scientific journal that he helped perform a frontal lobotomy to relieve "her intense pain, anxiety and agitation," the Buenos Aires daily Clarín reported Tuesday. Udvarhelyi died last year.

The study is causing a stir in the southern cone nation where Perón is still revered as a saint. According to Clarín, the operation was performed in "Evita's" bedroom sometime in June 1952. The wife of then-President Juan Domingo Perón died at the age of 32 from uterine cancer on July 26, 1952.

Nijensohn said that Eva Perón would need to be exhumed from the Buenos Aires Recoleta cemetery where she is buried in the family crypt to back up his study. Perón's body was taken to Milan following her husband's overthrow in 1955 and remained hidden at the Argentinean consulate there until it was brought to Madrid where the former president was living.

When he returned to power in 1973, he brought the body back to Argentina, along with his third wife.