Dr. Harvey Cushing

A snippet from http://precocious-bird.livejournal.com/5569.html

...I read in an article on the internet that Harvey Cushing, one of the best neurosurgeons of the 20^th was born in Ohio in the United States in 1869. The American surgeon vastly improved the chances of patients surviving complex neurosurgery and he was one of the first to use x-rays for the identification of brain tumors. Apart from being one of the most qualified teachers of neurology, he also made a ground breaking discovery pertaining surgery on the pituitary gland, a gland at the base of the brain that is part of an important network of glands that regulate ones hormones. Cushing was the first to discover Cushing's disease that results in rapid weight gain in the face and torso, muscle degradation and insomnia, as well as the weakening of skin tissue, thereby causing it to haemorrhage. The disease is caused by a tumor in the pituitary gland, stimulating it to produce extensive amounts of ACTH, a hormone normally responding to stress, which, in turn, triggers the excessive release of cortisol, a hormone responding to ACTH that causes the said symptoms. The only difference between Cushing's disease and Cushing's syndrome is the cause, for Cushing's syndrome is merely a dysfunction of the pituitary gland rather than a disease. Harvey Cushing was able to cure this condition by surgical intervention...