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Harvey Cushing (1869-1939) was the founder of neurosurgery as a surgical specialty. It was Cushing who developed the painstaking procedures and instrumentation so that entering the brain for removal of tumors would be not only feasible, but effective. A generation of neurosurgeons trained with Cushing, who is still revered in the field of neurosurgery. In addition, Cushing was a celebrated clinical researcher, an accomplished artist, a fine writer, a passionate collector of books, a medical historian and bibliographer, and the chief founder of the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library.

Credits

This exhibit, on display in the rotunda of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library from October 1, 2005 to February 2006, celebrated the Harvey Cushing Family Gathering, a reunion of Cushing's grandchildren and descendants held at Yale School of Medicine on October 1, 2005, and the publication of the first new full-length biography of Cushing since 1950, Michael Bliss's Harvey Cushing: A Life in Surgery, published by Oxford University Press. The materials are from the Historical Library, Cushing Whitney/Medical Library unless otherwise noted. Toby Appel, Terry Dagradi, Sarah Burge, and Lynn Sette prepared the exhibit. Florence Gillich, Toby Appel, Terry Dagradi, Hongbin Liu, Lei Wang prepared the Web adaptation. The exhibition was updated and migrated to the Omeka exhibition platform by Simbonis intern Emma Brennan-Wydra.

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