Walter Dandy - Early Life and Medical Training

Early Life and Medical Training

Dandy was the only son of John Dandy, a railroad engineer, and Rachel Kilpatrick, who were immigrants from Lancashire, England, and Armagh, Ireland, respectively. Dandy graduated in 1903 from Summit High School in Sedalia, Missouri, as class valedictorian, and then graduated in 1907 from the University of Missouri. In September 1907, he enrolled in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as a second year student. (He had started medical studies during his junior year in college and accumulated enough credits to skip the first year of medical school at Johns Hopkins.) Dandy graduated from medical school in the spring of 1910 at the age of 24, and became the sixth appointee to the Hunterian Laboratory of Experimental Medicine under Harvey W. Cushing from 1910-1911. In 1911, he earned a Master of Arts degree for his work in the Hunterian Laboratory, and went on to join the Johns Hopkins Hospital surgical housestaff for one year as Cushing's Assistant Resident (1911-1912). Dandy completed his general surgery residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital under William S. Halsted in 1918. (He had been appointed Halsted's Chief Resident in 1916.) While Dandy was introduced to the nascent field of neurosurgery by Cushing, it was George J. Heuer who completed Dandy's neurosurgical training after Cushing's departure for the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston in September 1912. Heuer had graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1908, worked as Cushing's first Assistant Resident from 1908-1909, and served as Halsted's Chief Resident from 1911 to 1914.

Dandy joined the staff of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1918 and immediately focused his energies on the surgical treatment of disorders of the brain and spinal cord. When Heuer left Hopkins in 1922 to become the head of surgery at the University of Cinicinnati, Dandy remained as the only neurosurgeon at the Johns Hopkins Hospital until his death in that hospital in 1946.