Harvey Cushing and the Secretion of the Posterior Pituitary into the C.S.F.

career in which he made important discoveries in several branches of medicine. In neurosurgery, some may argue that McEwen of Glasgow or Horsley of London rather than Cushing was the founder of the speciality. However Harvey Cushing was the first full time neurosurgeon and it was his work in the early days of the speciality that made it safe. Indeed, when he started in neurosurgery in 1899 the reported mortality for neurosurgical procedures was close to a 100% but by 1915 when he published a paper "concerning the results of operations for brain tumours", his mortality rate on average was 8.4%; high-