2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

Ock-Joo␣ C. Kim Harvard University
HSS Abstracts
Knowledge Out of Suffering: Harvey Cushing’s Brain Tumor Registry
This paper examines Harvey Cushing’s production of knowledge on brain tumors
from 1913 to 1932. While serving as the surgeon-in-chief at the Peter Bent Brigham
Hospital in Boston, Cushing assembled a powerful team of neurosurgeons,
pathologists, and physiologists that operated on more than 2,000 patients suffering
from brain tumors. Cushing knew that a deeper understanding of brain tumors
would come only from his patients. While dedicated to alleviating their suffering,
he freely experimented with aggressive, if not always successful, surgical techniques
and post-operative care. For Cushing, the therapeutic domain functioned also as a
scientific domain to produce knowledge. To systematize this knowledge, Cushing
established the Brain Tumor Registry, a long-term project to compile the medical
records and case histories of his patients. Using the Registry, Cushing was able to
produce landmark monographs on the varieties of brain tumors and the techniques
of surgical intervention. Cushing’s unusual capability to interplay between the
suffering patients and his expert medical group resulted in the Brain Tumor Registry,
a lasting legacy in neurosurgery. His case also raises a number of significant
historical and ethical questions. How did the patients’ experience of diseases affect
the process of collection of clinical data? Through what process was the knowledge
on brain oncology created from the patient records? What agencies, other than the
hospital, participated in the production of knowledge on brain tumors? How was
the Brain Tumor Registry related to emerging specialization in neurosurgery and
the clinical sciences such as pathology? How was Cushing able to orchestrate all
this while at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, and what does his story reveal about
medical care and research in the early twentieth century?
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Ann␣ F. La␣ Berge Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Dirty Stories:
Investigative Reporting as Scientific Practice
on the 19th-Century French Health Councils
The French health councils are one of the more interesting, yet neglected,
scientific institutions of the nineteenth century. They were one of the main sites
for the practice of public hygiene. The regular work of the hygienists was
investigative reporting: investigating public health problems and then writing
narrative accounts of their findings and recommendations. This paper will recount
some of the hygienists’ stories in their own words, drawn from both manuscript
and printed reports of on-site visits and their analyses of public health problems,
including epidemics, vaccination, secret remedies, dumps, sewers, public baths,
private dwellings, and a host of industrial/occupational concerns. An analysis of
these stories will allow us to reappraise the practice of public hygiene in light of
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