Pan P, Tan SY
Correspondence: Prof Tan Siang Yong, siang@hawaii.edu
SUMMARY
If you are going for it, I certainly would go in for it hard. Half-way measures never got anybody anywhere. – Letter from Harvey Cushing to his son Bill regarding his son’s intention to join the Yale varsity hockey team.
On a Saturday morning in 1926, Dr Harvey Cushing, chief and professor of surgery at Harvard’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, operated meticulously on a young woman with a brain tumour. The three-hour long operation was successful, yet Cushing’s stoic expression belied the turmoil and grief that raged within. He had just received news that his eldest son, Bill, was killed in an automobile accident. Known to many as the pioneer of American neurosurgery, Harvey Cushing was more than just a great surgeon. He once stated that “neurosurgery was 20% science, 75% artistry, and 5% community benefit”. Indeed it was intensity, sensitivity and discipline – in essence characteristics of an artist – that truly personified this great man.
Singapore Med J 2013; 54(7): 368-369; http://dx.doi.org/10.11622/smedj.2013135
