Harvey Williams Cushing

He wrote a biography of physician William Osler in three volumes.

Harvey Williams Cushing studied at Harvard Medical School and Yale University. Walter Dandy, Wilder Penfield and Thierry de Martel are recorded as having studied under Harvey Williams Cushing. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is surgery. Employment is recorded with Harvard University and Yale University. Distinctions recorded are honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Pulitzer Prize for Biography, honorary doctorate from the University of Strasbourg and Lister Medal.

• Name — Harvey Cushing • Birth Name — Harvey Williams Cushing • Born — 8 April 1869 • Birthplace — Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. • Died — 7 October 1939 • Place of death — New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. • Occupation — * Surgeon • neurosurgeon, medical writer • Children — 5, including Mary, Betsey, and Barbara • Known for — * Pioneering brain surgery • Cushing's syndrome • Years Active — 1895–1935 • Education — Yale University (BA) Harvard University (MD) • Prizes — Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Cushing was born in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents were Elizabeth Maria "Betsey M." Williams (sister of Edward and Charles Williams) and Henry Kirke Cushing, a physician whose ancestors came to Hingham, Massachusetts, as Puritans in the 17th century. Harvey, the fourth generation of a line of physicians founded by his great-grandfather Dr. David Cushing (1768–1814), was the youngest of ten children. As a child, Cushing attended the Cleveland Manual Training School, which expanded his interest in science and medicine. The school's emphasis on experimental training and a "physics-focused" approach to education played an important role in influencing Cushing toward a career in medical surgery. The school's manual dexterity training program also contributed to Cushing's future success as a surgeon. He graduated with an B.A. 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 pioneering surgeon William Stewart Halsted at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He subsequently trained in neurological surgery abroad under Emil Theodor Kocher at Bern and Charles Scott Sherrington at Liverpool.

Cushing began his career in private practice in Baltimore. During his time with Kocher, he first encountered the Cushing reflex, which describes the relationship between blood pressure and intracranial pressure. At the age of 32, he was made associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital and was placed in full charge of cases of surgery of the central nervous system. He wrote numerous monographs on surgery of the brain and spinal column and made important contributions in bacteriology. He conducted (with Vakil) 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 anesthesia, and his paper on its use in hernia gave him a European reputation. In 1911, he was appointed surgeon-in-chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. He became a professor of surgery at the Harvard Medical School starting in 1912. 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. In 1915, before the Clinical Congress of Surgeons in Boston, he showed the possibility of influencing stature by operating on the pituitary gland. In 1924, Cushing was awarded the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh.

Shortly after the entry of the United States into World War I, Cushing was commissioned as a major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps on May 5, 1917. He was director of American Base Hospital No. 5, which was attached to the British Expeditionary Force in France. Cushing also served as the head of a surgical unit in a French military hospital outside of Paris. During his time at the French military hospital, Cushing experimented with the use of electromagnets to extract metallic shrapnel fragments that were lodged within the brain. He was mentioned in a dispatch by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig in November 1917. On June 6, 1918, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and was assigned as senior consultant in neurological surgery for the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe. In early October, while in France, he came down with what he described as "the grippe," which was probably the Spanish flu. He would never fully recover. He attained the rank of colonel (O-6) on October 23, 1918. In that capacity, he treated Lieutenant Edward Revere Osler, who was fatally wounded during the third battle of Ypres. Lieutenant Osler was the son of Sir William Osler. Cushing returned to the United States in February 1919 and was discharged on April 9, 1919. In recognition of his service during the war, Cushing was invested as a Companion of the Bath by the British government. In 1923, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the U.S. Army.

Cushing authored the Pulitzer prize-winning biography, Life of Sir William Osler (London: Oxford University Press, 1925). From 1933 to 1937, when he retired, he worked at the Yale School of Medicine as Sterling Professor of Neurology. • Illustration — Harvey Cushing's tomb, Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio

Cushing married his Cleveland childhood friend Katharine Stone Crowell (1870–1949), granddaughter of Ohio congressman John Crowell, on June 10, 1902. They had five children, including three daughters famed for their beauty and collectively known as the 'Cushing sisters': • William Harvey Cushing (1903–1926) (died in an automobile accident while a student at Yale University) • Mary Benedict "Minnie" Cushing (1906–1978), who married Vincent Astor and later James Whitney Fosburgh; • Betsey Cushing (1908–1998), who married James Roosevelt and later John Hay Whitney; • Henry Kirke Cushing (1910–1983), who married Marjorie Estabrook in 1936. • Barbara "Babe" Cushing (1915–1978), the socialite wife of Stanley Grafton Mortimer and later William S. Paley. Cushing died on October 7, 1939, in New Haven, Connecticut, from complications of a myocardial infarction. He was interred at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. An autopsy performed on Cushing revealed that his brain harbored a colloid cyst of the third ventricle.

• Walter Dandy, the first pediatric neurosurgeon and the developer of pneumoencephalography • Leo M. Davidoff, founder of the Department of Neurological Surgery at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine • Norman Dott • Louise Eisenhardt, Neuropathologist and curator of Cushing's brain tumor registry with more than 2000 specimens. • Wilder Penfield, pioneer neurosurgeon and founder of the Montreal Neurological Institute

The authorities additionally record the headings Harvey Cushing, Dr. Harvey Cushing and Harvey W. His recorded language was English. He was the child of Henry Kirke Cushing and Betsey Maria Williams. He married Katherine Stone Crowell. 3 children are recorded: Mary Benedict Cushing, Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney and Barbara Cushing.

Harvey Williams Cushing worked in surgery. He was employed by Harvard University and Yale University. He belonged to Royal Society, German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Philosophical Society.

Harvey Williams Cushing is recorded as physician, neuroscientist, neurosurgeon, university teacher and neurologist.