Victor Darwin Lespinasse

Neuroendoscopy was described initially in the year 1910 by Victor Darwin Lespinasse (An urologist) where the lateral ventricles were accessed using a rigid cystoscope to fulgurate the choroid plexus as a measure to reduce cerebrospinal fluid production in hydrocephalic children ¹⁾.

Victor Darwin Lespinasse was born in 1878 in Aurora, Illinois. He attended Northwestern medical school where he became interested in urology. After graduation in 1901 and 2 years internship in Cook County hospital, he spent a short time at the Hopital Necker in Paris Lespinasse then commenced practice as a urologist at the Wesley Hospital and Northwestern Medical School. He attained the rank of Associate professor of Urology and was Chief of Urology from 1932-1944.

In this first experiment, two children were treated; one died in the immediate postoperative period, while the other lived on for another 5 years. Lespinasse did not officially record this adventure in the scientific literature, he merely introduced the method to the local medical society and mentioned it in his application, in 1913, to the American College of Surgeons, in which he cited the “destruction of the choroid plexus for internal hydrocephalus” among his surgical areas of interest. He would later tell his daughter Victoire, an obstetrician also from Chicago, that this pioneer procedure was “an intern’s stunt”