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Notable people · Medicine

Harvey Cushing

Cleveland-born neurosurgeon, called the father of modern neurosurgery, who described Cushing's disease. He died in New Haven and is buried at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.

At a glance

Born
1869-04-08
Died
1939-10-07
Education
Cleveland Manual Training School, Cleveland, OH
Yale University, New Haven, CT, to 1891, B.A.
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, to 1895, M.D.
Known as
Medicine
Organizations
Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale

Life story

Harvey Cushing was the youngest of ten children, born in Cleveland into a family of doctors. His father Henry Kirke Cushing was a physician, and Harvey was the fourth generation in that line. He went to Cleveland Manual Training School, then left Ohio for Yale and Harvard.

He earned a Yale B.A. in 1891 and a Harvard M.D. in 1895. He trained at Massachusetts General and then at Johns Hopkins under William Halsted, and studied abroad with Emil Kocher in Bern and Charles Sherrington in Liverpool. He went on to become surgeon-in-chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston in 1911.

He worked almost entirely on operations of the brain and the pituitary gland, and became the first surgeon to work only as a neurosurgeon. He described the pituitary disorder now called Cushing's disease in 1932 and helped bring blood-pressure measurement to North America.

He won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Sir William Osler. He died in New Haven in 1939 and was brought home to be buried at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.

Timeline

  • 1869-04-08: Born, youngest of ten children (Cleveland, OH) source
  • 1891: Earns Yale B.A. (New Haven, CT) source
  • 1895: Earns Harvard M.D.; begins practice in Baltimore (Boston, MA) source
  • 1902-06-10: Marries Katharine Stone Crowell (US) source
  • 1911: Becomes surgeon-in-chief at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (Boston, MA) source
  • 1917: Commissioned a major in the US Army Medical Corps (France) source
  • 1926: Wins Pulitzer Prize for Life of Sir William Osler (US) source
  • 1932: Publishes his account of the pituitary disorder now called Cushing's disease (Boston, MA) source
  • 1933: Becomes Sterling Professor of Neurology at Yale (New Haven, CT) source
  • 1939-10-07: Dies of heart complications (New Haven, CT) source

What Harvey is known for

  • Pioneered modern neurosurgery
  • Described Cushing's disease
  • Pulitzer Prize 1926 for the Osler biography
  • The Pituitary Body and its Disorders (1912)
  • Tumours of the Nervus Acousticus (1917)
  • The Life of Sir William Osler (1925)
  • Intracranial Tumours / Blood Vessel Tumours of the Brain (1928)
  • From a Surgeon's Journal, 1915-1918 (1936)

Honors and things named for them

  • Pulitzer Prize for Biography, 1926
  • Cameron Prize, University of Edinburgh, 1924
  • US Army Distinguished Service Medal, 1923
  • Lister Medal, 1930
  • Fellow of the Royal Society
  • Nominated for the Nobel Prize 38 times
  • Liberty ship SS Harvey Cushing
  • Cushing General Hospital, Framingham, MA
  • Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale
  • US 45-cent Great Americans stamp, 1988

Family

  • father: Henry Kirke Cushing
  • wife: Katharine Stone Crowell
  • child: William Harvey Cushing
  • child: Mary Benedict Cushing
  • child: Betsey Cushing
  • child: Henry Kirke Cushing
  • child: Barbara Cushing

Places in Ohio to see

Ohio places

Where Harvey Cushing was born, lived, worked and is remembered, with the ZIP code, town and county pages for each.

Further reading

Sources

Confidence. Medium: the main facts were confirmed, but some details (often an address or ZIP code) were not.

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