Harvey Cushing: The man

T rIE complex personality of Harvey Cushing becomes evident as one reads John Fulton's fascinating and monumental biography. 7 As Paul Bucy has said, ~ Harvey Cushing was indeed genius, derived largely from determination, hard work and extraordinary persistence -- and like geniuses he was a difficult man with whom to live. But, Paul continues, all the difficulties shrink into insignificance in the blinding light of his achievements. It seems almost sacrilege to attempt any critical assessment of one who, almost singlehandedly, abolished forever the terrible specter of fungus which was the appalling end-result of the old operation of temporal decompression for brain tumor, still common when I was a student. I was personally most fortunate in meeting Harvey Cushing a number of times, first in the 1920's when he visited the Sherringtons in Oxford, then again in the early 1930's when he would look in at the National Hospital in London to visit with Geoffrey Jefferson or