Item 04 - Letter to Laura E. Smith, July 20, 1922

Harvey Cushing was born on April 8, 1869 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the youngest child of Henry Kirke Cushing, physician, and Betsey Maria Williams. In 1902, he married Katharine Stone Crowell with whom he had five children : William Harvey, Mary Benedict, Betsey, Henry Kirke and Barbara. His primary and secondary education was in Cleveland. He received his A.B. at Yale University in 1891, and his M.A., M.D., at Harvard University in 1895. He died on October 7, 1939 in New Haven, Connecticut. Harvey Cushing began his career at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1895-96. He moved to Baltimore to work at the Johns Hopkins Hospital where he stayed for 15 years, mostly at the Faculty of Surgery. In 1912, he returned to Harvard as Professor of Surgery and also worked at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (1913-1932). In 1933, he became Professor of Neurology at Yale, a position he held until 1937. Considered a pioneer of Neurosurgery, he made several fundamental discoveries about the pituitary gland. Bibliophile and an earnest collector of books, he published many essays and other literary works, among them the 1926 Pulitzer prize-winning biography of William Osler.