3

THEODORE BROWN RASMUSSEN (1910-2002)
Surgeon, Scientist, Teacher and Friend
By Dr. William Feindel, oc, goq, mdcm

 

 


Portrait of Theodore Rasmussen
by Lynn Buckham, 1974

Family and Education

Theodore Brown Rasmussen was born on 28th April 1910 in Provo, Utah, the son of Gertrude Brown and Andrew Theodore Rasmussen1. His father became Professor of Neuroanatomy at the University of Minnesota from which Dr Rasmussen later graduated with a BS, MB, 1934; MD, 1935; MSci in Neurology, 1939. He supported himself through medical school by playing clarinet and saxophone in a jazz band. Because of his keen interest in track and field sports he arranged a general surgical internship in New York so he could attend these events at Madison Square Garden. He then continued on the neurosurgical service at King's County Hospital in Brooklyn for two years with Dr Jefferson Browder, a trainee of Harvey Cushing. Browder had developed one of the best centers for the treatment of head injuries in the United States. Young Rasmussen decided on a career in this specialty. On the advice of Dr Owen Wangensteen he spent six months at the Montreal Neurological Institute, but then followed Dr Wilder Penfield's suggestion to do a fellowship in neurology for three years at the Mayo Foundation. He returned to the MNI from 1939 to 1942 for his neurosurgical training under Wilder Penfield, William Cone and Arthur Elvidge.
 

  Group of MNI fellows and staff with Dr Penfield. Dr Rasmussen can be seen
   (2nd on left) in the center of the group, with arms on the sofa.(circa 1939)

Military Service
           Eight months short of completing his senior residency, he was called up for the United States Army. He spent the next four years as Chief of the Neurological Section in the 14th Evacuation Hospital in the India-Burma theater of operations on the Ledo Road. He was discharged with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. During that time he treated a series of a hundred patients with causalgia by sympathectomy and recorded these case studies with a colleague in the Journal of Neurosurgery.

1 Many years later, a neurosurgical colleague earnestly queried, "Ted, how come you were born in such an out-of-the-way place as Provo?" Ted succinctly replied, "I wanted to be near my mother."