CUSHING, HARVEY. 1869-1939.


Typed Letter Signed ("Harvey Cushing") to Clarice Rosenbaum with a reflection on his own care while hospitalized, 1 p, 8vo, New Haven, December 30, 1933, on New Haven Hospital letterhead, uneven toning.WITH: original photograph of Cushing with cigarette taken on his 60th birthday, a 5x6 inch gelatin silver print, published in Bliss's Harvey Cushing, after p 372.WITH: BUERGER, LEO. "Thrombo-angiitis obliterans: A study of the vascular lesions leading to presenile spontaneous gangrene." 8vo, wrappers, an offprint from the American Journal of Medical Sciences, October, 1908. Original wrappers."Meanwhile, I have learned a good deal about hospitals and how I might have taken care of my own patients better, yourself included." Cushing had moved to New Haven in October, 1933, after beung appointed the Sterling Professor of Neurology. Cushing's biographer Michael Bliss describes his deteriorating health at this time: "When he reached New Haven in 1933, he collapsed like an exhausted runner, suffering from a gastric ulcer and the effects of Buerger's disease in his feet and legs. He never fully recovered, and periodically he was hospitalized or confined to a wheelchair and crutches ... The vascular problems in his lower legs incapacitated him for much of the winter of 1934-5 and again in the autumn of 1936. Several toes became ulcerous and gangrenous and excruciatingly painful. In December 1935 various colleagues who examined him in New Haven Hospital ... thought it would be necessary amputate toes or a foot ... In January 1936 most of [one] toe had to be removed. Cushing also managed to break his heavy cigarette habit. Noticing an immediate improvement in his condition, he instantly became a convert to 'nicotine teetotalism'" (Bliss, Harvey Cushing, pp 482, 507). Included is an original 5 x 6 inch gelatin silver print of Cushing with a cigarette, taken on his 60th birthday, as well as a rare offprint of Leo Buerger's important paper, which "gives the first comprehensive report of the clinical and pathological aspects of the disease" (Garrison-Morton 2912).