Cushing, Harvey Williams

born April 8, 1869, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.

died Oct. 7, 1939, New Haven, Conn.

U.S. surgeon.

He taught principally at Harvard University and became known as the leading neurosurgeon of the early 20th century, developing many procedures and techniques still basic to brain surgery and greatly reducing its mortality rate. The leading expert in the diagnosis and treatment of intracranial tumours, he was also the first to ascribe to pituitary gland malfunction what is now known as Cushing syndrome. He wrote numerous scientific works, including The Life of Sir William Osler (1925, Pulitzer Prize).

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▪ American neurosurgeon

born April 8, 1869, Cleveland

died Oct. 7, 1939, New Haven, Conn., U.S.

      American surgeon who was the leading neurosurgeon of the early 20th century.

      Cushing graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1895 and then studied for four years at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, under William Stewart Halsted (Halsted, William Stewart). He was a surgeon at Johns Hopkins from 1902 to 1912 and thenceforth was surgeon-in-chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston and professor of surgery at the Harvard Medical School. In 1933 he joined the faculty of Yale University.

      Cushing developed many of the operating procedures and techniques that are still basic to the surgery of the brain, and his work greatly reduced the high mortality rates that had formerly been associated with brain surgery. He became the leading expert in the diagnosis and treatment of intracranial tumours. His research on the pituitary body (1912) gained him an international reputation, and he was the first to ascribe to pituitary malfunction a type of obesity of the face and trunk now known as Cushing's disease, or Cushing's syndrome. He wrote numerous scientific works and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1926 for his Life of Sir William Osler (1925).

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