Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2166

MOSES ALLEN STARR (1854-1932) Brain surgery. William Wood & Company 1893 xii, 295 pp., 59 illus. 21.5 cm.

Starr was one of the leaders in clinical neurology in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was head of the department of neurology at Columbia University in New York City for many years and was primarily a clinical neurologist, not a surgeon. This work provides some illuminating insights into the history of brain surgery in the United States at that time. Starr uses many case histories to discuss the pathological conditions for which brain surgery was then being performed and describes the methods and operations being done by such surgeons as McBurney, Keen, and Park. Much of the surgery was limited to trephining the skull, removing bone fragments, and draining the sites of infection. The exposure and removal of brain tumors through an osteoplastic flap was not begun until at least a decade after the appearance of this book.

Gift of John Martin, M.D.