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  The
specialty of neurosurgery was born at Johns Hopkins. In 1900, Harvey Cushing
completed his surgical training. After the European grand tour and a year
in Kocher's laboratory in Bern where he studied the effects of head injury,
Cushing returned to the surgical faculty. In the ensuing 12 years, he founded
the specialty of neurosurgery and established the characteristics of the
field which endure to this day.By the time Cushing accepted the Harvard Chair of surgery in 1912, his work at Johns Hopkins had established him as the outstanding young surgeon in the United States. Cushing brought Halsted's meticulous surgical technique to the new field and added Osler's careful clinical observation and his own penchant for accurate documentation. His clinical contributions are legendary: t the use of x-rays in surgical practice, physiological saline for irrigation during surgery, the discovery of the pituitary as the master hormone gland, founding the clinical specialty of endocrinology, the anesthesia record, the use of blood pressure measurement in surgical practice, and the physiological consequences of increased intracranial pressure. One of the principal inducements for Cushing to stay in Baltimore upon completion of his residency was his appointment as Director of the Hunterian Laboratory. Our concept of the clinician/scientist in medicine largely derives from Cushing's vision of the Hunterian as a place for young physicians to learn to do research.  One
of the earliest products of the Hunterian experience was Walter Dandy. During
the two years after medical school, Dandy completed his monumental work
on cerebrospinal fluid production, judged by many to be the finest piece
of surgical research ever accomplished. While still a house officer, he
devised air encephalography, which was the basis of neurological imaging
for nearly 50 years. Dandy went on the be the most famous surgeon of his
generation and the greatest technician the field has known. His innovations
introduced surgery for disc disease, surgery for aneurysms and arteriovenous
malformations as well as surgery for functional disease. The modern scope
of neurosurgery was encompassed by Dandy.Dandy's successor was A. Earl Walker, who established the first neurosurgery residency program at Johns Hopkins and emphasized research training during residency. It was his vision of the academic neurosurgeon as a researcher that kept neurosurgery within the National Institutes of Health programs. With a few other equally informed leaders, he contested the decision of organized neurosurgery to reject government aid for research and neurosurgery assumed the important role it has continue with the NIH.  In
1973, Donlin
M. Long succeeded Walker and the organization of the current program
began. Neurosurgery and Neurology joined to become a single Department of
Neurosciences. In 1982, the Adolf Meyer Center for Psychiatry and the Neurosciences
opened. The philosophical basis for the amalgamation of these three departments
and the formation of a neuroscience center is multi-fold. The conceptual
and practical base for neurosurgeons is no longer general surgery, but the
neurological sciences. Investigators interested in similar diseases work
together without regard to their specialty training. Most neurological diseases
are better treated by teams of specialists representing all of the medical
expertise the patients need than through individual departments. Neurosurgeons
now need education in related fields such as otolaryngology, neuro-ophthalmology,
and orthopaedics, which are beyond the boundaries of the traditional specialty.
The best way to accomplish this education is through the team approach.
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 © Copyright 2004 | All Rights Reserved The Johns Hopkins University | Department of Neurosurgery Meyer Building, Room 7-113 | 600 N. Wolfe Street Baltimore, Maryland 21287 USA 410-955-2252 (tel) | 410-955-8367 (fax) |
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