Harvey Cushing (1869-1939) was the founder of brain surgery, an enormous surgical advance. Working at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the early years of the twentieth century, Cushing developed the techniques that enabled surgeons to open the skull, expose the brain, and attack tumors, with a high probability of helping rather than harming patients. Cushing became world famous as the first neurosurgeon, and was one of the first American medical leaders to attract visitors and students from abroad. Moving to Harvard and the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Cushing in the 1920s made the apparently miraculous in surgery an every-day reality, as he and his team compiled an astonishing record of treating more than two thousand tumors. Cushing''s techniques also enabled him to become the world''s leading expert in the pituitary gland, and thus one of the pioneers in endocrinology, who has given his name to "Cushing''s syndrome" and "Cushing''s disease." In his spare time Cushing wrote elegant medical essays, won a Pulitzer Prize for his massive biography of William Osler, and amassed a great collection of rare medical books, which are now the basis of the Medical Historical Library at his alma mater, Yale. Harvey Cushing: A Life in Surgery is the first biography of Cushing to be published in fifty years. Drawing on new collections of intimate personal and family papers, diaries and patient records Michael Bliss re-creates both Cushing''s professional and, for the first time, his personal life in remarkable detail.
Industry Reviews
"As cleanly efficient as a successful operation.... As this solid, accessible biography reveals, Cushing may have been the very devil to live with, but with a scalpel in his hand, he did God's work."--Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune
"An absorbing chronicle of the career of one of the greatest medical innovators ever produced by the US--or any other country.... One of the most extraordinary lives any biographer might wish to study.... It is Bliss's great accomplishment that he has made accessible not only the science, medicine, and professional atmosphere of Cushing's career, but also the character and personality of the man.... What Bliss has given to his subject is what Cushing himself,
or any of us, would ask of a biographer: understanding."--Sherwin Nuland, New York Review of Books
"Monumental. Bliss begins before the cradle and ends beyond the grave, touching both on the material facts of Cushing's remarkable successes and on his convoluted inner life.... It is difficult to imagine how any future writer might improve on this masterpiece of compassion and erudition." --Richard Barnett, Lancet
"Brings back to life an amazingly accomplished man who was the father of American neurosurgery, a leading authority on the pituitary gland, a pioneer of endocrinology and a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer."--Denver Post
"A fast paced, engaging portrait of one of America's great pioneers and heroes. Bliss gives important insight into Cushing's motivations, inspirations, demons, and flaws, thus revealing how he was motivated to change a field and bravely create a new outlook on the functioning of the brain as well as a fundamentally new approach to medicine and research." --Henry Brem, Harvey Cushing Professor and Chairman, Department of Neurosurgery, Johns Hopkins
"Bliss...had a voluminous treasure trove of primary documents with which to work. His readable and thoroughly documented book presents Cushing as both an icon and a human being whose family and colleagues suffered from his single-minded devotion to work and blunt perfectionism. Written almost 60 years after the last major Cushing biography, this illustrated work calls on new resources and provides a more contemporary perspective."--Library Journal
"The essence of biography is the elucidation of personality, and this is accomplished in a superb fashion in Michael Bliss's splendid modern biography of Harvey Cushing, with each chapter providing a facet of insight into a complex and fascinating icon of 20th century medicine and surgery." --Edward R. Laws, MD, FACS, Professor of Neurosurgery and Medicine, University of Virginia
"Bliss has provided us with a definitive biography of the founder of American neurosurgery. It is a book about glitter and intensity, about vision and persistence, and about the emergence of America as a world leader in medicine. Sophisticated, balanced, and thoughtful it is a story of interest to physicians, surgeons, and lovers of history." --Peter M. Black, MD, PhD, Franc D. Ingraham Professor of Neurosurgery, Harvard Medical School and
Neurosurgeon-in-Chief, Brigham and Women's Hospital
"Another tour-de-force by Michael Bliss. Like Bliss' William Osler: A Life in Medicine, it will be a classic of medical history." --Jock Murray, Medical Humanities Program, Dalhousie University
"It is beautifully written and illustrated, a pleasure to read, and paints Cushing 'warts and all.' A must for anyone with an interest in the development of our profession and with the life of this extraordinary man."--British Journal of Hospital Medicine
"Bliss does a superlative job in conveying the strains that Cushing's surgical ambition and his celebrity status placed on his marriage."--Susan E. Lederer, American Historical Review
"Bliss does a superlative job in conveying the strains that Cushing's surgical ambition and his celebrity status placed on his marriage."--Susan E. Lederer, American Historical Review
"This masterwork of narrative brings to vibrant life one of the most complex, brilliant, and endlessly fascinating medical personalities of recent times. In a book that will stand as the definitive biography of Harvey Cushing, Michael Bliss demonstrates once again why he is that ideal combination of storyteller and scrupulous historical researcher craved by general readers and envied by academics."--Sherwin Nuland
"Monumental. Bliss begins before the cradle and ends beyond the grave, touching both on the material facts of Cushing's remarkable successes and on his convoluted inner life.... It is difficult to imagine how any future writer might improve on this masterpiece of compassion and erudition." --Richard Barnett, Lancet
"An absorbing chronicle of the career of one of the greatest medical innovators ever produced by the US--or any other country.... One of the most extraordinary lives any biographer might wish to study.... It is Bliss's great accomplishment that he has made accessible not only the science, medicine, and professional atmosphere of Cushing's career, but also the character and personality of the man.... What Bliss has given to his subject is what Cushing himself,
or any of us, would ask of a biographer: understanding."--Sherwin Nuland, New York Review of Books
"A fast paced, engaging portrait of one of America's great pioneers and heroes. Bliss gives important insight into Cushing's motivations, inspirations, demons, and flaws, thus revealing how he was motivated to change a field and bravely create a new outlook on the functioning of the brain as well as a fundamentally new approach to medicine and research." --Henry Brem, Harvey Cushing Professor and Chairman, Department of Neurosurgery, Johns Hopkins
"As cleanly efficient as a successful operation.... As this solid, accessible biography reveals, Cushing may have been the very devil to live with, but with a scalpel in his hand, he did God's work."--Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune
"Brings back to life an amazingly accomplished man who was the father of American neurosurgery, a leading authority on the pituitary gland, a pioneer of endocrinology and a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer."--Denver Post
"Bliss...had a voluminous treasure trove of primary documents with which to work. His readable and thoroughly documented book presents Cushing as both an icon and a human being whose family and colleagues suffered from his single-minded devotion to work and blunt perfectionism. Written almost 60 years after the last major Cushing biography, this illustrated work calls on new resources and provides a more contemporary perspective."--Library Journal
"The essence of biography is the elucidation of personality, and this is accomplished in a superb fashion in Michael Bliss's splendid modern biography of Harvey Cushing, with each chapter providing a facet of insight into a complex and fascinating icon of 20th century medicine and surgery." --Edward R. Laws, MD, FACS, Professor of Neurosurgery and Medicine, University of Virginia
"Bliss has provided us with a definitive biography of the founder of American neurosurgery. It is a book about glitter and intensity, about vision and persistence, and about the emergence of America as a world leader in medicine. Sophisticated, balanced, and thoughtful it is a story of interest to physicians, surgeons, and lovers of history." --Peter M. Black, MD, PhD, Franc D. Ingraham Professor of Neurosurgery, Harvard Medical School and
Neurosurgeon-in-Chief, Brigham and Women's Hospital
"Another tour-de-force by Michael Bliss. Like Bliss' William Osler: A Life in Medicine, it will be a classic of medical history." --Jock Murray, Medical Humanities Program, Dalhousie University
"It is beautifully written and illustrated, a pleasure to read, and paints Cushing 'warts and all.' A must for anyone with an interest in the development of our profession and with the life of this extraordinary man."--British Journal of Hospital Medicine
