William Macewen was a visionary fearless Scottish surgeon who performed the first documented successful resection of a brain tumor on July 27, 1879. The pioneering operation received little attention at the time, and even today Macewen is under-recognized for his historic accomplishment. In this vignette, the author discusses details of Macewen's landmark procedure and describes two other groundbreaking brain tumor operations, one performed by Rickman Godlee 5 years later and another performed by Zanobi Pecchioli almost half a century earlier.
Keywords: Antisepsis; Brain tumor; Glioma; Godlee; History; Localization; Macewen; Meningioma; Operation; Pecchioli.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.