>From the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library's Exhibits website,
http://info.med.yale.edu/library/about/exhibits.html :
"Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind: Renaissance of the Cushing Brain Tumor
Registry" is on display in the foyer outside the entrance to the
Cushing/Whitney Medical Library.
The Registry, a legacy of the charismatic and world-renowned
neurological surgeon Harvey Williams Cushing, whose collection of
medical-historical texts and incunabula founded in part the
Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, is an astounding collection of gross
brain and tumor specimens, microscopic specimens, hospital records, and
photographs encompassing over 2,000 neurosurgical case stuides from
1898 to 1936. This immense and valuable archive represents at once Dr.
Cushing's "complete works," the genesis of modern neurological surgery
as a specialty, and a definitive model for clinical research and
correlation. In storage for decades, the archive is now being
refurbished in its entirety by Christopher J. Wahl and the Section of
Neurological Surgery at the Yale School of Medicine.
The exhibit traces the beginnings of the collection from Mary
Donnelly's "lost" pituitary specimen at the Johns Hopkins Hospital to
its formal organization in Boston, through its move to New Haven in
1934; it follows the archive into the depths of the Edward S. Harkness
Medical Student Dormitory, where it has remained a part of medical
school lore ever since. The display includes commentary on the
historical significance of the Registry; its scientific and
philosophical contributions to the fields of neurology, neurosurgery,
and medical education; and the scope of its restoration. Also in the
display are several instruments of Cushing's design, a forty-minute
video with excerpts from Cushing's 2,000th brain tumor operation in
1931, and allusion to the current state of the art in neurovascular and
epilepsy surgery.
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