He married in 1863 but the following year he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and gave up his practice and relocated to a region south of the Pyrenees in search of a cure.

Beginning in this period, he published widely on his psychiatric and neurological research findings in the medical press, developing the thesis that mental illnesses had their origins in specific regions of the brain.

In 1882, he was appointed the medical director of a small, modern, and privately run psychiatric clinic at Marin, in the canton of Neuchâtel, where he was provided with a laboratory to continue his research.

Aimed at relieving symptoms rather than effecting a cure, the theoretical basis of the procedure rested on his belief that psychiatric illnesses were the result of specific brain lesions.

[15] In this article he proposed that there were "cortical dispersion centres" which were "rooted in physiology and anatomy in the brain" and that these played a crucial role in the development of mental illness.

[6] Burckhardt drew inspiration for his hypothesis from recent advances which had shown the localisation of language faculties in the brain and he believed that mental diseases were also traceable to specific cortical centres.

[16] In the application of internal medicine to psychiatry, his research activities extended to an exploration of the relationship between mental illness and bodily temperature, blood pressure and pulse.

[14] In August 1882 Burckhardt was appointed as the medical director of the Préfargier, a small but modern psychiatric clinic in Marin in the Swiss Canton of Neuchâtel.

[19] He continued to publish on psychiatric and neurological topics such as cerebral vascular movements, brain tumours and optic chiasm, traumatic hysteria, and writing disorders.

[25] Burckhardt's case notes recorded that the patients all exhibited serious psychiatric symptoms such as auditory hallucinations, paranoid delusions, aggression, excitement and violence.

It would be more advantageous to practice the excision of a strip of cortex behind and on both sides of the motor zone creating thus a kind of ditch in the temporal lobe.

While his findings were subsequently widely reported in the psychiatric literature, the reviews were unremittingly negative and there was much ill ease generated by the surgical procedures he had performed.

[29] He also published the results of the procedure in 1891 in the periodical Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie und psychischgerichtliche Medicin in an article entitled 'Uber Rindenexcisionen, als Beitrag zur operativen Therapie der Psychosen' ('Concerning cortical excision, as a contribution to the surgical treatment of psychosis').

[32] After the publication of his impressive 81 page monograph on the subject in 1891, Burckhardt ended his research and practice of psychosurgery due to the ridicule he received from his colleagues over the methods he had employed.

[33] Commenting on his monograph in 1891 the British psychiatrist William Ireland concluded: Dr. Burckhardt has a firm faith in the view that the mind is made up of a number of faculties, holding their seats in distinct portions of the brain.

He defends himself from the criticisms which are sure to be directed against his bold treatment by showing the desperate character of the prognosis of the patients upon whom the operations were performed ...[34]Ireland doubted that any English psychiatrist would have the "hardihood" to follow the path taken by Burckhardt.

[35] Following the death of his wife and one of his sons, Burckhardt left his position at the Préfargier in 1896 and returned to Basel with the intention of setting up a sanatorium.