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The Harvey Williams Cushing Papers in the Yale University Library are composed of correspondence, subject files, writings, family papers, artifacts, and writings about Harvey Cushing. The papers document the personal life and professional career of a medical giant and pioneer neurosurgeon. They reveal Cushing as a doctor, teacher, soldier, administrator, bibliophile, and scientist, whose diverse achievements are important to the histories of the Harvard Medical School, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, and the Yale University Medical School and Library, as well as to the history of brain surgery. Harvey Williams Cushing was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 9, 1869. He was the youngest of ten children of Henry Kirke and Betsey Maria (Williams) Cushing. Medicine was a family tradition. His father was a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Western Reserve University. His brother, Edward Fitch, grandfather, and great-grandfather were also physicians. His grandfather, Erastus Cushing, had moved to Cleveland in 1835 from Massachusetts, where the family had become established some two hundred years earlier.