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Harvey Williams Cushing (April 8, 1869 - October 7, 1939) was an American neurosurgeon and a pioneer of brain surgery. He is considered by many the greatest neurosurgeon of the 20th century. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Cushing graduated from Yale, where he was a member of Scroll and Key and Delta Kappa Epsilon, studied medicine at Harvard Medical School and graduated in 1895. He completed his internship at Massachusetts General Hospital and then studied surgery under the guidance of a famous surgeon, William Stewart Halsted, at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore. During his medical career he was a surgeon at this hospital, at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston and as professor of surgery at the Harvard Medical School. From 1933, until his death, he worked at Yale University.
In the beginning of the 20th century he developed many of the basic surgical techniques for operating on the brain. This establised him as one of the foremost leaders and experts in the field. Under his influence neurosurgery became a new and autonomous surgical discipline.
His achievements include:
- improved considerably the survival of patients after difficult brain operations for intracranial tumors
- used x-rays to diagnose brain tumors
- used electrical stimuli for study of the human sensory cortex
- was the world's leading teacher of neurosurgeons in the first decades of 20th century
Cushing's name is commonly associated with his most famous discovery - the Cushing's disease. In 1912 he discovered an endocrinological syndrome caused by a malfunction of the pituitary gland. He described it in his work The Pituitary Body and its Disorders. Cushing was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, for a biography of one of the fathers of modern medicine - Sir William Osler. He died in 1939, in New Haven, Connecticut.
Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library
The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University contains extensive collections in the field of medicine and the history of medicine. In 2005, the library released portions of its collection online, including the Peter Parker Collection which consists of a collection of portrait engravings and 83 mid-19th century oil paintings rendered by artist Lam Qua of Chinese tumor patients, and a biography of Harvey Cushing by John F. Fulton.
See also
External links
- Fulton, John F. Biography of Harvey Cushing John F. Fulton’s biography of Harvey Cushing, was the first book-length biography of Cushing and has remained the standard source on his life. It is now avalialable in its entirety in digital form at the website of the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
American science writers | Pulitzer Prize winners | History of medicine | American physicians | Endocrinologists | Neurosurgeons | American neuroscientists | American biographers | 1869 births | 1939 deaths
Harvey Williams Cushing | Harvey Williams Cushing | Harvey Cushing | Harvey Williams Cushing | ハーヴェイ・ウィリアムス・クッシング | Harvey Williams Cushing | Harvey Cushing
"Harvey Cushing"