Percival Bailey

Who was Percival Bailey?

Percival Sylvester Bailey was an American neuropathologist, neurosurgeon and psychiatrist who was a native of rural southern Illinois.

He originally studied to became a teacher at Illinois Normal University, but transferred to the University of Chicago in 1912, where he became interested in neurology. In 1918 he graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, and in 1919 became an assistant to Harvey Cushing at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. In 1928 he became head of the neurosurgical department at the University of Chicago, and in 1939 was professor of neurology and neurological surgery at the University of Illinois. From 1951 he was director of the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute.

Percival Bailey is remembered for his collaborative work with Harvey Cushing, and his important work involving the classification of brain tumors, which prior to his research was in state of disarray and confusion. From 1922 to 1925, Bailey performed extensive pathological and histological studies of brain tumors, and based on cellular configuration, he created a classification system of thirteen categories. In 1927, he reduced the number of categories to ten.