1909
In 1909 Allen Buckner Kanavel (1874-1938), a self-instructed innovator in brain, spine and peripheral nerve surgery, is first to describe the infranasal transsphenoidal approach to the pituitary gland. With his colleague, urologist Victor Lespinasse, Kanavel attempts unsuccessfully to treat hydrocephalus in two infants by coagulating the choroid plexus through a cystoscope introduced into the ventricular system.
Cushing performed his first transsphenoidal operation in 1909 in a patient with acromegaly by using a modified form of the Schloffer method to reach the pituitary gland. He did not find this approach satisfactory and instead favored a modified form of the sublabial-transsphenoidal route described by A. E. Halstead and Theodor Kocher.
The prominent physicians who have practiced in the Inselspital include Emil Theodor Kocher, the 1909 Nobel laureate. He was among the first physicians to describe the traumatic rupture of the IVD in 1896.
As early as 1909 Oppenheim and Krause published 2 case reports on surgery for a herniated lumbar disc 1).
The International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) was founded in 1909
The pedunculopontine nucleus was first described in 1909 by Louis Jacobsohn-Lask, a neuroanatomist born in Bydgoszcz.