ABSTRACT
Many surgeons would regard the surgical diathermy unit as the United States’ most important contribution to standard surgical technique. In the spring or summer of 1926, Cushing, then Surgeon-in-Chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Boston, and the Moseley Professor of Surgery at Harvard University Medical School, became interested in the use of high-frequency currents to deal with vascular intracranial tumours. Cushing, much encouraged by the success of his first operation, called back all his patients with what had been thought to have been inoperable meningiomas, particularly those of the olfactory groove and the highly vascular haemangiomas. Cushing's publications and Bovie's refined instrument did much to establish the use of the diathermy knife and electrocoagulation in general surgical practice, and today it is found in every reasonably equipped operating theatre throughout the world.
