Harvey Cushing

Harvey Williams Cushing was born April 8, 1869, and became the first surgeon to work exclusively on the brain and spine - a specialty that didn't exist before him. He developed techniques that dropped operative mortality rates and made neurosurgery a credible field rather than a last resort. Along the way he identified the pituitary disorder now called Cushing's disease. He was also a pathologist, a writer, and a draftsman who sketched what he saw in the operating theater. He spent years writing a three-volume biography of physician William Osler. Cushing died October 7, 1939, having built the foundation every brain surgeon since has stood on.