Harvey Cushing at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital

Abstract

Harvey Cushing's years at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston were marked by the establishment of neurosurgery as a surgical subspecialty. As a clinical neurosurgeon, he performed more than 2000 brain tumor operations in that time and reduced neurosurgical mortality from 50% to only 8%. As a teacher, he trained a whole generation of neurosurgical leaders, created the Society of Neurosurgeons, and indirectly led to the founding of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. As an author, he produced monographs on pituitary adenomas, acoustic neuromas, meningiomas, gliomas, blood vessel tumors, and tumor surgery and won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Sir William Osler. As an investigator, he described Cushing's disease, the Cushing reflex, Cushing's ulcer, the "third circulation" of cerebrospinal fluid, and a variety of other phenomena. And as a book collector, he developed perhaps the most significant collection of antiquarian medical and surgical texts extant. In these Brigham years, he clearly became the Neurosurgeon of the Century.