Harvey Cushing

SURGEON, diarist, traveler, bibliophile, molderot more than a generation of medical students in the highly technical Held of brain surgery, a specialty of which he was virtually the founder, Harvey Cushing always wished to be remembered as a “good doctor.”The tradition of medicine ran strongly in his family. Not content to follow the more simple lines of practice, Cushing chose deliberately the hardest and least known type of surgery, the exploration of the brain, bringing to it thorough investigation, sound judgment, and a deep understanding of human nature.

The story of Cushing’s life has been compiled by his biographer in a manner that would have won the wholehearted approval of Harvey Cushing himself. He liked “to look all around a problem, ” and his junior colleague, Professor Fulton, has taken the precept of his teacher. Cushing had already set down the lines of his own biography when he wrote his Life of Sir Williain Osler. Dr. Fulton, moreover, found an abundance of basic material, for Cushing kept diaries, many of them cleverly illustrated, from the time of his school days almost up to the end ot his life. By judicious selection from these and from Cushing’s other writing, Dr. Fulton has produced a readable account which should stir the imagination of the average reader. For Cushing was a somewhat controversial figure in medicine, a man who was frequently dogmatic and sometimes clearly wrong. His peppery temper not infrequently displeased his contemporaries, but no one ever questioned the worth of his contributions.

Anyone who wishes to understand the last fifty years of life in America should read this fine biography.

HENRY R. VIETS, M.D.