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What Is The Legacy Of The World’s First Ever Neurosurgeon?
As a field of medicine, neuroscience is simultaneously one of the oldest and one of the fastest-evolving around, with many of its biggest breakthroughs emerging over the past half-century.
Depending on whether trepanation counts as a form of brain surgery, the first surgical procedure ever executed could have been on the brain, but significant advances in brain surgery emerged in the middle of the 20th century, accelerated by Lars Leksell and the pioneering Gamma Knife radiosurgery treatment.
However, one of the most important neurosurgeons ever was the first to dedicate himself to the craft of treating brain injuries and disorders, and without his pioneering work, decades of progress may not have ever happened.
He attended the Cleveland Manual Training School, which focused on physics, experimental training and a focus on manual dexterity, the latter particularly important to his future as a neurosurgeon.
He gained his medical degree in 1895 and trained under Emil Kocher and Charles Sherrington, the former the first surgeon to win the Nobel Prize and the latter the inventor of the word synapse and one of the foremost experts of neuroscience at the time.
These experiences inspired Dr Cushing to focus his attention entirely on neurosurgery, rather than the subset of other surgical disciplines that Dr Kocher particularly treated it as.
During his time at Bern, he discovered the relationship between intracranial pressure and blood pressure, a concept known to this day as the Cushing Reflex.
By the time he returned to America and joined the team at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr Cushing had become internationally renowned for being the first specialist in neurosurgery, leading to patients travelling vast distances to have brain tumours treated.
He was one of the first physicians to diagnose brain tumours using X-rays, significantly improving the quality and accuracy of surgery in the process.
Surgery in general up until that point was seen as exceedingly risky, and brain surgery had a particularly high mortality rate, something that Dr Cushing helped to reduce substantially, which consequently made neurosurgery a field that has become exceptionally precise and safe in the process.
He was particularly effective at treating brain tumours, and his research on the pituitary gland would lead to the discovery of Cushing’s Syndrome.
With the help of William Bovie, he developed the Bovie electric cauteriser, a tool that can be used both to destroy small lesions (similar to how stereotactic radiosurgery works) or stop wounds from bleeding, significantly reducing the risk of surgery and helping recovery.
He also developed the Cushing forceps and ventricular cannula, which are still used in brain surgery to this day.
Whilst not the first to understand the relationship between electricity and brain function, he used electrostimulation to study how the senses function in the brain.
He also was amongst the first to operate under local anaesthesia, additionally helping to make surgery safer and less painful for patients.
During his military service in the US Medical Corps, he experimented with magnetism to see if it would be possible to safely remove shrapnel fragments from the brain, even receiving a mention from the now infamous Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig.
Near the end of the war, he would be seriously affected by the Great Influenza (often known as the Spanish flu) and would upon his return focus on teaching the first generation of neurosurgeons, expanding the practice in the process.
He would train the first female president of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Louise Eisenhardt among other incredibly influential neurosurgeons.
Despite being nominated at least 38 times, he never won a Nobel Prize in Medicine, which is amongst the most surprising omissions to the legacy of the most prestigious award in the sciences.
Whilst he never won a Nobel Prize unlike his teachers and some of the surgeons he taught, he did manage to win a Pulitzer Prize for his three-part biography of Sir William Osler, one of the four founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital and commonly described as the father of medicine as we know it today.
Depending on whether trepanation counts as a form of brain surgery, the first surgical procedure ever executed could have been on the brain, but significant advances in brain surgery emerged in the middle of the 20th century, accelerated by Lars Leksell and the pioneering Gamma Knife radiosurgery treatment.
However, one of the most important neurosurgeons ever was the first to dedicate himself to the craft of treating brain injuries and disorders, and without his pioneering work, decades of progress may not have ever happened.
Father Of Brain Surgery
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on 8th April 1869, Harvey Williams Cushing was fascinated by medicine and science more broadly at an early age, and these formative experiences would influence his career and the field of neurosurgery more broadly.He attended the Cleveland Manual Training School, which focused on physics, experimental training and a focus on manual dexterity, the latter particularly important to his future as a neurosurgeon.
He gained his medical degree in 1895 and trained under Emil Kocher and Charles Sherrington, the former the first surgeon to win the Nobel Prize and the latter the inventor of the word synapse and one of the foremost experts of neuroscience at the time.
These experiences inspired Dr Cushing to focus his attention entirely on neurosurgery, rather than the subset of other surgical disciplines that Dr Kocher particularly treated it as.
During his time at Bern, he discovered the relationship between intracranial pressure and blood pressure, a concept known to this day as the Cushing Reflex.
By the time he returned to America and joined the team at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr Cushing had become internationally renowned for being the first specialist in neurosurgery, leading to patients travelling vast distances to have brain tumours treated.
Creating The Field
Brain surgery had existed in a semi-recognisable form since before Dr Cushing was born, but the basic principles and techniques that are seen with operations on the brain were either outright invented or developed by Dr Cushing himself.He was one of the first physicians to diagnose brain tumours using X-rays, significantly improving the quality and accuracy of surgery in the process.
Surgery in general up until that point was seen as exceedingly risky, and brain surgery had a particularly high mortality rate, something that Dr Cushing helped to reduce substantially, which consequently made neurosurgery a field that has become exceptionally precise and safe in the process.
He was particularly effective at treating brain tumours, and his research on the pituitary gland would lead to the discovery of Cushing’s Syndrome.
With the help of William Bovie, he developed the Bovie electric cauteriser, a tool that can be used both to destroy small lesions (similar to how stereotactic radiosurgery works) or stop wounds from bleeding, significantly reducing the risk of surgery and helping recovery.
He also developed the Cushing forceps and ventricular cannula, which are still used in brain surgery to this day.
Whilst not the first to understand the relationship between electricity and brain function, he used electrostimulation to study how the senses function in the brain.
He also was amongst the first to operate under local anaesthesia, additionally helping to make surgery safer and less painful for patients.
During his military service in the US Medical Corps, he experimented with magnetism to see if it would be possible to safely remove shrapnel fragments from the brain, even receiving a mention from the now infamous Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig.
Near the end of the war, he would be seriously affected by the Great Influenza (often known as the Spanish flu) and would upon his return focus on teaching the first generation of neurosurgeons, expanding the practice in the process.
He would train the first female president of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Louise Eisenhardt among other incredibly influential neurosurgeons.
Despite being nominated at least 38 times, he never won a Nobel Prize in Medicine, which is amongst the most surprising omissions to the legacy of the most prestigious award in the sciences.
Whilst he never won a Nobel Prize unlike his teachers and some of the surgeons he taught, he did manage to win a Pulitzer Prize for his three-part biography of Sir William Osler, one of the four founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital and commonly described as the father of medicine as we know it today.
