|
 WILLIAM
H. SWEET
[extract
dated 1983] Dr. William H. Sweet, Chief of the Neurosurgical Service from
1961 to 1977, grew up in the timberlands of Washington state. A brilliant student
and gifted musician, he graduated from high school at the age of 14 and spent
the next year studying to be a concert pianist. Concluding that he did not have
the talent necessary for such a career, he worked in a sawmill for a year before
entering the University of Washington. In 1930 he was graduated and moved east
to attend Harvard Medical School. His
stay at Harvard was interrupted by a Rhodes Scholarship, which enabled him to
spend two years conducting research in neurophysiology at Oxford University. He
returned to Harvard in 1934 and graduated with the class of 1936. Dr.
Sweet received the bulk of his neurosurgical training at the University of Chicago
Clinics and Billings Hospital under Dr. Percival Bailey. In 1940 he returned to
Harvard Medical School and MCH as a Commonwealth Fund Fellow for research and
special training in surgery of the autonomic nervous system. His
belief that many clinical advances begin in the laboratory led to the creation
of a neurosurgical research unit comprising laboratories devoted to the study
of biophysics, neurophysiology, electron microscopy, neurochemistry, and immunology.
He also emphasized the importance of research training in the residency program. Dr.
Sweet is noted for his improvements in clinical neurosurgery including the introduction
of pituitary stalk section for diabetic retinopathy and percutaneous thermal rhizotomy
for trigeminal neuralgia. Other achievements include work on hypothermia during
neurosurgical operations, extracranial and intracranial vascular disorders, pain,
and aggressive behavior associated with organic brain disease. Other research
interests have focused on the formation and flow of cerebrospinal fluid in humans,
and the use of radioactive and stable isotopes in the diagnosis and/or treatment
of central nervous system disorders including priSharon malignant brain tumors.
He was instrumental in establishing the first position emission scanner and also
was the first to introduce proton-beam therapy into clinical medicine. Dr.
Sweet held the post of Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School before retiring
there from in 1927. He has served on major committees for the National Institutes
of Health and was for 22 years Harvard's "Scientific Trustee" on the
Board of the Associated Universities, Inc., moving in 1981 to tic one of the four
Honorary Trustees of that corporation. The American Association of Neurological
Surgeons named him as the second recipient of its premier honor, the Harvey Cushing
Medal. He is the only living neurosurgeon in the Western hemisphere to have received
the Otfrid Foerster Medal of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie.
In October 1982 he completed a term as the third president of the American Pain
Society. He is a member and officer of numerous other scientific and neurosurgical
societies, both in the United States and abroad.
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| An interview with
William H. Sweet,
M.D., D.Sc. ('41)
by Vernon Mark, M.D. ('54),
recorded
Februrary 28,1989.
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