Harvey Cushing: A Life in SurgeryHere is the first biography to appear in fifty years of Harvey Cushing, a giant of American medicine and without doubt the greatest figure in the history of brain surgery. Drawing on new collections of intimate personal and family papers, diaries and patient records, Michael Bliss captures Cushing's professional and his personal life in remarkable detail. Bliss paints an engaging portrait of a man of ambition, boundless, driving energy, a fanatical work ethic, a penchant for self-promotion and ruthlessness, more than a touch of egotism and meanness, and an enormous appetite for life. Equally important, Bliss traces the rise of American surgery as seen through the eyes of one of its pioneers. The book describes how Cushing, working in the early years of the 20th century, developed remarkable new techniques that let surgeons open the skull, expose the brain, and attack tumors--all with a much higher rate of success than previously known. Indeed, Cushing made the miraculous in surgery an everyday event, as he and his team compiled an astonishing record of treating more than two thousand tumors. This is the definite Cushing biography, an epic narrative of high surgical adventure, capturing the highs and lows of an extraordinary life. |
Contents
The Surgeon and the General | 3 |
The Cushings of Cleveland | 11 |
2 Making a Yale Man | 34 |
3 Making a Harvard Doctor | 56 |
4 Making an American Surgeon | 84 |
5 A Window on the Brain | 131 |
The Birth of Neurosurgery | 164 |
Illustrations | 180 |
10 An American Surgeon at Passchendaele | 313 |
11 Fathers and Sons | 356 |
Chief and Harem | 405 |
13 Sprinting to the Tape | 450 |
14 Regius Professor at Yale | 483 |
Inheritance and Memory | 517 |
Notes and Sources | 523 |
Acknowledgments | 569 |
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acromegaly American anesthetic Baltimore Base Hospital became began Betsey biography Boston brain tumor British Cleveland clinical Cushing wrote Cushing’s Dandy Dandy’s Diary doctors Dr Cushing early Erastus father friends German gland Halsted Halsted’s Harvard Harvard Medical School Harvey Cushing Harvey’s HC to BMC HC to KC head hyperpituitarism interest Intracranial John Fulton Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins Hospital Journal July June KC to HC Kirke Klebs later letter Madeline Stanton medical school medicine Meningiomas mother nerve Neurological neurosurgery neurosurgical never notes nurses operating room Papers patients perhaps Peter Bent Brigham physicians pituitary problem seemed Sept Simon Flexner summer surgeon surgery surgical talk things thought tion told Kate took trigeminal neuralgia trying Walter Dandy weeks William Osler William Welch Wood’s wounded Yale Yale’s young