| 1869. DR. HARVEY WILLIAMS CUSHING |
| Sex: M
Birth: 8 Apr 1869 in Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio Death: 8 Oct 1939 in New Haven, Connecticut Burial: Oct 1939 Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio, Plot: Sec 10, Lot 57 Education: M.D. Harvard University in 1895 Occupation: Associate in Surgery of John Hopkins Hospital
Harvey Williams Cushing graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1895 and underwent his initial training with William Halstead. In 1900 he traveled to Europe and worked with Theodor Kocher and Victory Horsley, the founder of British neurosurgery. On returning to the United States he joined the staff at John Hopkins Hospital where he began his neurosurgical studies. In 1912 he was appointed professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and surgeon-in-chief at the newly opened Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.
In addition to his clinical writings he was awarded the Pulitzer prize in 1926 for his book entitled the Life of Sir William Ostler. The endocrine disorder named after him is obviously Cushing's Syndrome or Disease. Cushing's Syndrome is the state of prolonged exposure to corticosteroids resulting from either excessive cortisol production or steroid medication. Cushing's Disease is pituitary dependent adrenocortical hyperplasia due to a basophilic pituitary microadenoma.
"I would like to see the day when somebody would be appointed surgeon somewhere who had no hands, for the operative part is the least part of the work" Cushing H W. The basophil adenomas of the pituitary and their clinical manifestations. Bull Johns Hopkins Hosp 1932: 50: 137-195.
Education at Yale, Harvard, and MGH, 1887-1896 Cushing attended Yale College from 1887 to 1891. In his first year he rented rooms with his cousin Perry W. Harvey in a rooming house at 166 York Street, a building that is still standing. He soon became a fervent Eli who played on the baseball team for four years, rooted for the Yale football team, was tapped for the secret society Scroll and Key, and served on committees to plan Class of '91 special events.
In contrast to his four years of social life at Yale, Cushing's next four years at Harvard Medical School were devoted to hard work. Even as a medical student, he assisted in operations, especially by administering ether. After receiving his M.D. in 1895, he stayed on for another year as a house officer at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
The Johns Hopkins Years and Becoming a Neurosurgeon
After a Wanderjahr abroad in 1900-1901, Halsted offered Cushing a position as an Associate in surgery working in neurology and neurosurgery, and teaching surgical anatomy and operative surgery to medical students. In addition to treating charity patients in the wards, Cushing would have the opportunity of earning fees from private patients. It was during the first decade of the new century that Cushing rose to international fame as the first specialist in neurosurgery and an expert on the pituitary gland. Patients came from far away to be operated on for brain tumors.
Harvey received the degree of A.B. from Yale University in 1891, and those of A.M. and M.D. from Harvard University and its Medical Department in 1895. Graduate of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, 1896. Resident in Baltimore. Harvey Cushing began his career at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1895-96. He moved to Baltimore to work at the Johns Hopkins Hospital where he stayed for 15 years, mostly at the Faculty of Surgery. In 1912, he returned to Harvard as Professor of Surgery and also worked at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (1913-1932). In 1933, he became Professor of Neurology at Yale, a position he held until 1937. Considered a pioneer of Neurosurgery, he made several fundamental discoveries about the pituitary gland. Bibliophile and an earnest collector of books, he published many essays and other literary works, among them the 1926 Pulitzer prize-winning biography of William Osler. Associate Professor of Surgery, John Hopkins University 1902 - 1912. Professor of Surgery at Harvard University and surgeon-in-chief, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital 1912 - 1932. Sterling Professor of Neurology at Yale University 1933 - 19 39. Director of U.S.A. Base Hospital No. 5 in France attached to the B.E.F., May 1917 to March 1919. Recipient of many honors at home and abroad, MC, DSM (U.S.) etc. Author of several medical treatises and "The Life of Sir William Osler", which won the Pulitzer Prize (1925). His notable library of medical history is at Yale University.
HARVEY WILLIAM CUSHING, A Brief Biography
Beginning in 1905, Dr. Cushing started to develop many of the basic surgical techniques for operating the brain, thus establishing neurosurgery as a new and autonomous surgical discipline. He improved considerably the survival of patients after difficult brain operations for intracranial tumors, an area where he became one of the foremost leaders and experts of all times. He was also the first to use x-rays to diagnose brain tumors and to stimulate electrically the sensory cortex of a human being. He established an international reputation as a teacher of neurosurgeons, with many followers and students, many of whom became also world famous. In his honor, one of the first medical associa tions in neurosurgery was formed (the Harvey Cushing Society, later absorbed in to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons). His name was also immortalized in the history of medicine, by his discovery, in 1912, of Cushing's disease, an endocrinological syndrome caused by a malfunction of the pituitary gland. This discovery was described in detail in "The Pituitary Body and its Disorders". Cushing wrote extensively, and was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, for his respected biography of Sir William Osler, one of the "fathers" of modern medicine. For all this, he is considered the greatest neurosurgeon of the 20th century. He died in 1939, in New Haven, Connecticut.
Family Boat Trip up the Great Lakes in 1898 Left to right: Betsey Maria Cushing (HC's mother) holding Edward H. (Pat) Cushing (infant son of HC's brother Ned), Harvey Cushing, Kate Crowell, Melanie Harvey Cushing (wife of Ned) and Dr. Ned Cushing
After a long courtship, Harvey Cushing married Kate Crowell on June 10, 1902 in Cleveland. They had known each other from childhood. The couple moved into No. 3 W. Franklin St., Baltimore, next door to William and Grace Osler, whose company they thoroughly enjoyed. They were saddened when Osler was named Regius Professor at Oxford in 1905.
By the time the Cushings moved to Brookline, Massachusetts in 1912, they had four children. The last child, Barbara, was born in 1915. As Harvey focused on his surgical career to the point of workaholism, Kate, a highly competent woman, was left to manage the household and raise five children largely on her own.
Harvey Cushing lived long enough to see his second daughter Betsey marry James Roosevelt, son of Franklin Roosevelt, and become the mother of two daughters, Sara and Kate.
Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and War Service
Not long after Cushing settled in at the P.B.B.H., war was declared abroad. Cushing went to France twice to oversee a surgical unit and to operate on the wounded, especially those with head wounds. The first was in 1915 when he headed a Harvard unit for a three-month stint at the Ambulance americain in Paris. In 1917, he took charge of U.S. Base Hospital No. 5, composed of Harvard staff, and remained in Europe until the end of the war.
Cushing was at the height of his career as neurosurgeon, researcher, and clinical teacher in the 1920s. He was chief of surgery at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Moseley Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. Patients were sent to him from near and far, so that by 1931, he had completed 2000 tumor operations. It was at the Brigham that he trained the next generation of neurosurgeons and demonstrated his operations to visitors from around the world. In these years, with Percival Bailey and then Louise Eisenhardt, he carefully collected and studied his clinical data to name, classify, and improve the removal of tumors from all parts of the brain.
According to the retirement rules Cushing himself had helped to set, he was to retire from Peter Bent Brigham Hospital at the age of 63. Showered with offers, including remaining at Harvard, he finally chose to return to Yale as Sterling Professor of Neurology (he preferred Neurology to Neurosurgery because he no longer felt in good enough health to operate). Though Cushing did not teach or do his own operations at Yale, he took part in a variety of Yale activities and was able to complete a number of major writing projects. At the time of his death, he was working on his A Bio-Bibliography of Andreas Vesalius. Moreover, he initiated the project, with Fulton and Klebs, of pooling their rare medical books to give to Yale if Yale would build a library to house them. Cushing's lobbying among the administration and Corporation led to the decision to build a new medical library (medical books and journals were previously in Sterling Memorial Library) with a wing devoted to the Historical Library. Cushing heard that building would begin just before he died of a heart attack on October 7, 1939. Cushing's Yale class of 1891, celebrating their 50th reunion, paid for the decoration of the Library rotunda. His Yale classmate and longtime friend, Grover Atterbury was the architect of the Library.
The gift of his many books and extensive private collection of exhibits and documents along with the gifts of two other doctors formed (in 1941) the foundation of todays Yale Medical Library called the Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library. Dr. Cushing received many honors, including more than twenty honorary degrees, and was one of six individuals, and the only surgeon, to be elected to Honorary Fellowship in the British Royal College of Physicians. His biography of Sir William Osler was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1926. 1880 US Census: Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio
Father:
Marriage 1: Katharine Stone Crowell b: 27 Nov 1869 in Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland d: 8 May 1949
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