Harvey Cushing: His Contribution to Anesthesia

Cushing’s earliest experience with anesthesia prompted an interest in it and led to many important contributions to the specialty, including the introduction of the first anesthetic charts and routine blood pressure measurement. In addition, he reintroduced the use of local anesthetics into clinical practice, coined the term “regional anaesthesia,” and recognized that improvements in anesthetic standards could lead to better operating conditions. On January 10, 1893, Dr. Frank Lynam offered Cushing, then a Harvard medical student, the opportunity to administer ether to a woman with a strangulated hernia. Lynam recalls that Cushing “was not as anxious for the position as I had expected. . . .“ (1 ,p69). I t is recorded in Cushing’s “line-a-day‘‘ diary, and in a letter to his father, that he had given ether on several occasions before this date, and it appears that his reluctance on this day may have arisen from a previous unpleasant experience. Despite Cushing’s reservations, the patient was anesthetized. The surgeon, Dr. C. B. Porter, found ”a sack filled with gan-