Although neurosurgery is no longer what it once was, the neurosurgeon’s loss has been the patient’s gain. Most of my work is now concerned with tumours of the brain – tumours with names like glioma or meningioma or neurinoma – the suffix ‘-oma’ coming from the ancient Greek word for tumour and the first part of the word being the name of the type of cell from which the tumour is thought to have grown.
