Harvey Williams Cushing - founder of anesthetic monitoring, pioneer of neurosurgery (to the 150th of birthday

Abstract

Harvey Williams Cushing (1869–1939) graduated from Yale College and Harvard Medical School, and worked at the Massachusetts General Hospital of Boston. He created the first anesthesia card, introduced the term “regional anesthesia” into medical practice, described the Cushing triad, and in 1901, the second in the world, performed a successful operation on the pituitary gland for acromegaly. In 1910, he accepted the offer to become the head of the department of surgery at Harvard Medical School and the chief surgeon at Peter Benton Brigham Hospital, located on the campus. In 1933, Cushing moved to Yale, where from 1933 to 1937. was a professor of neurology. In the US, Harvey Williams Cushing is honored as a pioneer of neurosurgery and the greatest neurosurgeon in world history. Cushing developed and improved the technique of many neurosurgical operations, proved the right to the very existence of intracranial surgery as a separate medical specialty. In 1939, he was honored to become an Honorary Member of the Royal Medical College in London. Harvey Williams Cushing died on October 7, 1939 from myocardial infarction. He was awarded honorary degrees in nine American and thirteen European universities; several state orders and medals; as well as many different awards and prizes. Harvey Williams Cushing was a member of the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Natural Sciences, and the American Academy of Humanities and Natural Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Society of London, and also an honorary member of about seventy medical, surgical, and scientific communities in Europe, USA, South America and india.