The Cushing Brain Tumor Registry, in the simplest of terms, is a diary. It is an immense document comprised of over 2,000 case studies: human whole-brain specimens, microscopic slides, about 50,000 pages of hospital records, notes, journal excerpts, and over 15,000 compelling photographic negatives materials dating from the late 1800s to 1936. It is at once a scientific epic which chronicles the emergence of neurological surgery as a modern medical specialty, an icon for the relentless scientific pursuit of clinical knowledge, and quite literally, a portrait of human misery, bravery, suffering, and triumph.
The Registry actually began as Dr. Harvey Cushing ‘s personal collection, which he aspired to become a database of clinical information in the foundling stages of modern surgery on the brain and central nervous system. Its formal organization did not occur until after 1932, when Dr. Cushing retired from his position as Moseley Professor of Surgery at Boston’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. At this time, he hoped his archive would become a formal repository for brain tumor specimens of all sortsa dream which would never be realized.
When Dr. Cushing accepted a position at the Yale Medical School as Sterling Professor of Neurology, he arranged to have the entire Registry brought with him, complete with microfilmed copies of patient records. This astounding collection has been the property of Yale School of Medicine ever since. The knowledge gleaned from this little-known legacy revolutionized the practice of neurosur gery (and indeed, all of medicine); many of these materials were previously published in scientific journals, monographs, and abstracts. The painstaking methods which created this Registry exemplify an ideal construct for clinical research a subtle, but equally important contribution to science.
In the past year, however, a review of these original materials revealed another rather surprising aspect of Cushing’s Brain Tumor Registry. The photographic portion of the archive, aside from its obvious scientific merit, gives the observer a unique glimpse into the world of Dr. Cushing’s patients. While nearly a century old, the photographs and records afford one the opportunity to witness a timeless emotional undercurrent, to briefly grasp a sense of what it means to be a person with a serious neurological affliction. The experience becomes more sublime when one stops to consider that the photos were all taken in an era when “brain surgery” was the novel work of only a handful of pioneers.
This exhibit, then, offers for you excerpts and vignettes from the “complete works” collected by one of modern medicine’s most prolific innovators, Dr. Harvey Williams Cushing. The Brain Tumor Registry is not merely an account of his unyielding passion for the acquisition and synthesis of knowledge, but a valuable historical, social, and scientific legacy which documents and vividly portrays the state of American medicine, specifically neurological surgery, in the early twentieth century.