title: Harvey Cushing, the spine surgeon: the surgical treatment of Pott disease.
abstract: METHODS
  Review of historical archival records.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Describe Harvey Cushing's patients with spinal pathology.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Harvey Cushing was a pioneer of modern surgery but his work on spine remains largely unknown.
  
  
  METHODS
  Review of the Chesney Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1896 to 1912.
  
  
  RESULTS
  This is the first time that Cushing's spinal cases while he was at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, including those with Pott disease, have been described.Cushing treated three young men with psoas abscesses secondary to Pott disease during his residency: he drained the abscesses, debrided any accompanying necrotic vertebral bodies, irrigated the cavity with salt, and left the incision open to close by secondary intention. Although Cushing used Koch's "tuberculin therapy" (of intravenous administration of isolated tubercular bacilli) in one patient, he did not do so in the other two, likely because of the poor response of this first patient. Later in his tenure, Cushing performed a laminectomy on a patient with kyphosis and paraplegia secondary to Pott disease.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These cases provide a view of Cushing early in his career, pointing to the extraordinary degree of independence that he had during his residency under William Steward Halsted; these cases may have been important in the surgical upbringing both of Cushing and his coresident, William Stevenson Baer, who became the first professor of Orthopedics at Johns Hopkins Hospital. At the turn of the last century, Pott disease was primarily treated by immobilization with bed rest, braces, and plaster-of-paris jackets; some surgeons also employed gradual correction of the deformity by hyperextension. Patients who failed a trial of conservative therapy (of months to years) were treated with a laminectomy. However, the limitations of these strategies led to the development of techniques that form the basis of contemporary spine surgery-instrumentation and fusion.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, Johns Hopkins Spinal Column Biomechanics and Surgical Outcomes Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA. abydon1@jhmi.edu
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bydon
authors.forename: Hormuzdiyar H
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Dasenbrock
authors.forename: Courtney
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pendleton
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: McGirt
authors.forename: Ziya L
authors.initials: ZL
authors.lastname: Gokaslan
authors.forename: Alfredo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Quinones-Hinojosa
mesh_terms: D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019635:Neurosurgical Procedures / Q000266:history*; D014399:Tuberculosis, Spinal / Q000266:history* / Q000601:surgery; D014481:United States