Boris Karloff - Dr. Harvey Cushing

An anthology series presenting tales of suspense and the supernatural, often featuring the host in chilling narratives.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Boris Karlov speaking. I'm here with a story
for you. From the files of the reader's digest. The
man on the operating table was suffering from a tumor
on the brain. Swiftly the surgeon, a newly graduated in turn,
went to work. A few hours later, the patient died.

(00:21):
It came as a surprise to no one, for the
year was eighteen ninety five, and in those days, nine
out of ten patients failed to survive brain surgery. Twenty
five years later, the young in turn, had reversed the arts.
Nine out of ten patients survived brain operations. His name

(00:44):
doctor Harvey Cushing. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was
a good but uninspired student, But in medical school, in surgery,
he found his true vocation. And yet, because of an
experience in medical school, Cushing almost gave up medicine. It
was regular practice for second year students to administer ether,

(01:07):
and Cushing had served in that capacity only a few times.
When one of his patients died in the middle of
an operation, he blamed himself and deciding to give up
being a doctor. Only the arguments of friends finally made
him change his mind. When Cushing hung up his shingle
in Baltimore. His salary as staff physician at a hospital

(01:29):
was just three hundred and fifty dollars a year. Hoping
to augment it, the thirty two year old surgeon requested
that all cases at Johns Hopkins in which brain surgery
was indicated be referred to him. It was only a
trickle at first, for doctors almost universally regarded a brain
operation as a sentence of death. But as Cushing's brain

(01:53):
tumor mortality rate kept dropping, more and more cases came
to him an almost single hand. He had created a
new surgical specialty. After America's entry into World War One,
doctor Cushing was commissioned a major and took a surgical
team overseas. At home, he had considered a single brain

(02:14):
operation a full day's work, but at the front he
tackled as many as eight a day, operating by candlelight
when air alerts had shut off the power. In August
nineteen eighteen, the Chateau Tierre, Cushing came down with an
obscure infection of the nervous system. After the armistice, he

(02:34):
returned to this country and slowly, painfully his fingers regained
their skill. He was never able to walk easily again,
but doctor Cushing was as busy as ever. His surgical
technique was still advancing, though sometimes he operated sitting down.
In a lifetime of brilliant accomplishment, Harvey Cushing was showered

(02:58):
with international honours, but he was first of all the
friend of sick people in their time of trouble. He
could command astronomical fees from the wealthy, but a patient
of limited means might find and close with doctor Cushing's
modest bill. A note. I don't want you to feel
bound to pay this account unless you can really manage

(03:20):
to do so. But if you can pay it, or
can pay part of it in due course, I'll be
obliged to you. I found the story of doctor Harvey
Cushing in the back files of The Reader's Digest, But
in the current December issue of the magazine there's the
story of another immortal man of medicine. He they own
a Gucci diseased detective extraordinary. Now, if Sherlock Holmes had

(03:46):
been lured into a fatal trap by a suspect in
his greatest case, his end would have been comparable to
the martyrdom of the Rockefeller Institute's Incomparable Disease Detective, when
the Gucci died of yellow fever in West Africa, the
victim of a murderous microorganism that he had tracked half

(04:06):
way round the world himself. The whole story is in
the December issue The Reader's Digest. I'll be joining you
soon again with more transcribed stories, but until then, this
is Boris Karloff saying good bye.