William Gordon Lennox

William Gordon Lennox (1884–1960) was an American neurologist who was a pioneer in the use of electroencephalography (EEG) for the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy.

Biography

Lennox first became interested in epilepsy when working as medical missionary in China.. At the Harvard Medical School, he worked alongside and published many papers with Stanley Cobb and Erna and Frederic Gibbs. Lennox was president of the International League Against Epilepsy from 1935 to 1946. After a period as co-editor, he became the editor-in-chief of the journal Epilepsia from 1945 to 1950. He was jointly awarded (with Frederic Gibbs) the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 1951. He wrote, with his daughter Margaret, "Epilepsy and Related Disorders" (Vols. 1 and 2, Little Brown & Co, Boston, 1960), which contains his description of Lennox-Gastaut syndrome.

In 1937, Lennox described the situation regarding the medical treatment of epilepsy at the time:

Lennox was also involved with the eugenics movement. He gave a speech in 1938 to Harvard's Phi Beta Kappa, recommending euthanasia for "the congenitally mindless and for the incurable sick who wish to die". In the same year, he wrote "The principle of limiting certain races through limitation of off-spring might be applied internationally as well as intranationally." In 1943, Lennox joined the advisory council of the Euthanasia Society of America (later known as Partnership for Caring). In 1950, he wrote an article entitled "The Moral Issue", calling for the mercy killing of "children with undeveloped or misformed brains" as a way of opening up space in "our hopelessly clogged institutions."