| Harvey Williams Cushing | |
|---|---|
Harvey Cushing (c.1900) |
|
| Born | April 8, 1869 Cleveland, Ohio |
| Died | October 7, 1939 (aged 70) New Haven, Connecticut, United States |
| Education | Yale University Harvard Medical School |
| Years active | 1895-1935 |
| Known for | Pioneering brain surgery |
| Spouse | Katharine Stone Crowell (m. 1902–1939) |
| Children | William Harvey Cushing Mary Benedict Cushing Betsey Cushing Henry Kirke Cushing Barbara Cushing |
| Parents | Bessie Williams Kirke Cushing |
Harvey Williams Cushing, M.D. (April 8, 1869 - October 7, 1939), was an American neurosurgeon and a pioneer of brain surgery, and the first to describe Cushing's syndrome.[1] He is often called the "father of modern neurosurgery."
Contents |
Cushing was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Bessie Williams and Kirke Cushing, a physician whose family came to Hingham, Massachusetts, as Puritans in the 17th century.[2] Harvey Cushing was the youngest of ten children. He graduated with an A.B. degree in 1891 from Yale University, where he was a member of Scroll and Key and Delta Kappa Epsilon (Phi chapter). He studied medicine at Harvard Medical School and earned his medical degree in 1895. Cushing completed his internship at Massachusetts General Hospital and then did a residency in surgery under the guidance of a famous surgeon, William Stewart Halsted, at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore.
After doing exceptional cerebral surgery abroad under Kocher at Bern and Sherrington at Liverpool, he began private practice in Baltimore. Here, at the age of 32, he was made associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and at the hospital was placed in full charge of cases of surgery of the central nervous system. Yet he found time to write numerous monographs on surgery of the brain and spinal column and to make important contributions to bacteriology. He made (with Kocher) a study of intracerebral pressure and (with Sherrington) contributed much to the localization of the cerebral centers. In Baltimore, he developed the method of operating with local anaesthesia, and his paper on its use in hernia gave him a European reputation. He has also made important contributions to the study of blood pressure in surgery. In 1911, he was appointed surgeon-in-chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.[3] He became a professor of surgery at the Harvard Medical School starting in 1912.[4] In 1913, he was made an honorary F.R.C.S. (London). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1914.[5] In 1915, before the Clinical Congress of Surgeons in Boston, he showed the possibility of influencing stature by operating on the pituitary gland.[3]
During 1917-9, he was director of a U.S. base hospital attached to the British Expeditionary Force in France. In 1918, he was made senior consultant in neurological surgery for the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe during World War I. He served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, attaining the rank of Colonel (O6).[3] In that capacity, he treated Lt. Edward Revere Osler, the son of Sir William Osler, who was fatally wounded during the third battle of Ypres.[6]
From 1933 to 1937, when he retired, he worked at Yale University School of Medicine.[4]
Cushing died on October 7, 1939 in New Haven, Connecticut, from complications of a myocardial infarction.[1][4] He was interred at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.[7] Interestingly, an autopsy performed on Cushing revealed that his brain harbored a colloid cyst of the third ventricle.
In the beginning of the 20th century he developed many of the basic surgical techniques for operating on the brain. This established him as one of the foremost leaders and experts in the field. Under his influence neurosurgery became a new and autonomous surgical discipline.
Arguably, Cushing's greatest contribution came with his introduction to North America of blood pressure measurement. On visiting colleague Scipione Riva-Rocci, an Italian physician, Cushing was astonished at Riva-Rocci's non-invasive way to measure intra-arterial pressure. In 1896, Riva-Rocci developed a wall-mounted mercury manometer linked to a balloon-inflated cuff that would measure the pressure needed to compress arterial systolic pressure, i.e. systolic blood pressure measurement. Riva-Rocci's design was based on a more primitive version developed by French physician Pierre Potain. Cushing brought back a sample of Riva-Rocci's sphygmomanometer, and blood pressure measurement became a vital sign and its use spread like wildfire across the US and western world as a direct contribution by Harvey Cushing. Its use remained until Russian physician Nikolai Korotkov included diastolic blood pressure measurement in 1905 (after he discovered the famed "Korotkoff sounds") with his modern sphygmomanometer, which also replaced the mercury manometer with a smaller, round dial manometer.[8]
Cushing's name is commonly associated with his most famous discovery—Cushing's disease. In 1912 he reported in a study an endocrinological syndrome caused by a malfunction of the pituitary gland which he termed "polyglandular syndrome." He published his findings in 1932 as "The Basophil Adenomas of the Pituitary Body and Their Clinical Manifestations: pituitary Basophilism".[9]
Cushing was also awarded the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for a book recounting the life of one of the fathers of modern medicine, Sir William Osler.[10] In 1930, Cushing was awarded the Lister Medal for his contributions to surgical science. As part of the award, he delivered the Lister Memorial Lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in July 1930.[11][12] Cushing was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1934, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.[13]
In 1988, the United States Postal Service issued a 45 cent postage stamp in his honor, as part of the Great Americans series.[14]
Aside from Cushings many acomplishments, he developed many surgical instruments that are still in use today, most notably the Cushing Forcep. This instrument is used to grasp the thick tissues of the scalp during crainal surgery. He also developed a surgical magnet while working with the Harvard Medical Unit in France during WWI to extract bullets from the heads of wounded soldiers.
The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library[15] 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. In 2010, Yale placed on display Cushing's collection of brain specimens.[16]
He married Katharine Stone Crowell, a Cleveland childhood friend, on June 10, 1902. They had five children: William Harvey Cushing; Mary Benedict Cushing who married Vincent Astor and after a divorce married painter James Whitney Fosburgh;[17] Betsey Cushing, who married James Roosevelt and later John Hay Whitney;[18] Henry Kirke Cushing; and Barbara Cushing, the socialite wife of Stanley Grafton Mortimer and later William S. Paley.[19]
|
||||||||