Harvey Williams Cushing was born to Betsy and Henry Cushing on April 8, 1869 in Cleveland, Ohio. The son and grandson of physicians, Cushing's father specialized in diseases of women and in medical law. Cushing carried on the family tradition and attended Yale College and Harvard Medical School, earning his M.D. from Harvard in 1895. He then served as a resident at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He traveled in Europe for one year (1900-1901) where he studied under two important physiologists, Emil Kocher (1841-1917) in Bern, Germany, and Charles Scott Sherrington in London, England.

After his return from Europe, Cushing began to concentrate on the specialty for which he was to become famous: neurosurgery. In the early 1900s, the techniques of brain surgery were poorly developed and survival rates from such procedures were close to zero. Stimulated by his work in Bern and London, Cushing began...