a prominent surgeon in Manhattan while still in his twenties.  In the decade after the Civil War Halsted was experimenting with the recently invented hypodermic syringe and the new drug, cocaine, and he made a significant discovery.  When he injected cocaine into the skin, the nerves were deadened.  It was the first effective local anesthetic and it was a major leap for modern surgery.  Unfortunately, Halsted was also experimenting on himself and he found that when he injected the drug directly into his veins he got a rush that was better than sex.  “Cocaine hunger fastened its dreadful hold on him,” a colleague wrote.  “He tried to carry on, but a confused and unworthy period of medical practice ensued.  Finally he vanished from the world he had known.”

Halsted didn’t vanish.  He was shanghaied.  His friends chartered a schooner with a trusted crew and sailed him to the Virgin Islands and back in a desperate attempt to wean him from his habit.  They managed to keep him clean for a couple of months but as soon as he hit the beach he started shooting up again.  In a last ditch effort he checked himself into a hospital in Providence, and after one relapse—through sheer will power and inner strength—he emerged triumphant, completely cured.  Or so the story went.

Shortly after that, in 1886, Halsted joined with Osler, Welch and Billings—the “Big Four”—to found the prestigious Johns Hopkins Hospital.  Halsted’s skill and ingenuity as a surgeon made him world famous.  His private life was exemplary.  He married a thoroughbred Southern belle and they lived together in “complete mutual devotion” until Halsted’s death thirty-six years later.  The fairytale would have ended there except for a small black book with a silver lock and key.

In 1969, on the eightieth anniversary of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the book was formally opened according to the instructions of its author, Sir William Osler, one of the four founders.  In it was the “secret history” of the Hopkins, and here Sir William revealed that Halsted had cured his cocaine habit by