This is my seventh year at Yale, but until last semester, I had never visited The Cushing Center at the Yale School of Medicine library. Named for 1891 Yale College graduate Harvey Cushing—who is considered the “father of modern neurosurgery”—the collection displays more than 400 jars of patients’ brains and tumors.
Cushing was a fascinating character: he was dedicated to advancing the field of brain surgery at a time when most neurosurgery was fatal. He meticulously and obsessively documented each case, making drawings immediately upon leaving the surgery area, and most notably, photographing his patients both before and after surgery. While the brain specimens are on display in the gallery, the Center also shows a small sampling of the thousands of photographs that Cushing collected. Though no one knows who took the photographs (it was most likely several different photographers), they display a remarkable humanity that I find almost unparalleled for such a stark, scientific, subject matter.
The photographs have not been digitized yet, so I later went back and shot a few of the photographs on display.
Cushing himself, shot in the same manner as his patients.
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