The Foundations of Neurosurgery in Australia and New Zealand

Harvey Cushing and some Australian connections: Part 2 – post World War 1

“…He worked with him for eight months, learning his techniques, and no doubt obtained advice about setting up a neurosurgical unit in Adelaide. 8 1930 was also a busy year for HC as he was now 61 years and approaching retirement. He received many offers from numerous universities for appointments to various chairs but declined them, saw his daughter Betsy marry James Roosevelt on 6 June and visited England to give the Lister Memorial Lecture on '' Neurohypophyseal Mechanisms from a Clinical Standpoint" in July.…”

“…24 He was a founding member of The Neurosurgical Society of Australasia. 8 Sir Harold R. Dew (HRD) Harold R. Dew was born in Melbourne, graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1914, and immediately joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in France and Egypt. In Egypt he worked in pathology and collected a good collection of specimens illustrating Egyptian endemic diseases.…”

The Visual Fields: An Interdisciplinary History II. Neurosurgeons and Quantitative Perimetry

“…15 In Melbourne, Hugh Trumble (1894Trumble ( -1976 is generally thought to have been self taught: alone of the eight founders of the Neurosurgical Society of Australia, he appears never to have gone overseas to visit Cushing or any of his pupils in America or Europe. 16 In diagnostic problems, he relied on his brother-in-law, the neurologist Leonard Cox (1894-1994). 17 Nevertheless, in a paper reporting 20 personal cases of tumours in the region of the chiasma, Trumble gave perceptive accounts of the visual field changes, illustrated with charts done on an arc perimeter; he also mentioned the use of the Bjerrum screen.…”

World War I: the genesis of craniomaxillofacial surgery?

“…3 Australian CCS, a few miles from Cushing's unit, before his posting to the Queen's Hospital, Sidcup, to head the Australian section there. After the war, Newland maintained an interest in neurosurgery 14 . In 1940, he became one of the first three honorary members of what is now the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia.…”

“…By 1940, there were eight neurosurgeons practising in Australia and New Zealand. Almost all were influenced by Cushing or by one of his trainees 14 . However, for whatever reason, be it Gillies’ personality, or the end of British Army support and wartime pressures, or indeed the widespread perception that facial reconstruction was cosmetic and therefore a part of the rapidly developing field of cosmetic surgery − for whatever reason, Gillies trained practically no one from the UK and his infrastructure faded away.…”