Dr. Charles K. McSherry
Dr. Charles K. McSherry, clinical professor emeritus of surgery, died on Dec. 13 at NewYork Weill Cornell Medical Center from complications with kidney and heart disease. He was 70.
Dr. McSherry was internationally renowned for his research into gallstone formation and cancer of the colon. He worked with Dr. Frank Glenn, former surgery chairman (1947–1967), in creating a biliary disease registry and led the way in introducing laparoscopic surgery for gallstones, which simplified an operation performed on about 500,000 Americans a year by eliminating the major incisions in the abdomen made to reach the gallbladder.
Dr. McSherry received his bachelor's degree from Fordham and his medical degree from Cornell in 1957. After completing his residency and a research fellowship at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, he joined the faculty and spent the next 20 years of his medical career at Cornell. In 1992, he returned to Cornell as clinical professor of surgery, after serving as professor of surgery at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and director of surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center.
Dr. McSherry contributed more than 110 articles and more than 30 books and book chapters to the literature of calculous biliary tract disease. He was a past president of the New York Surgical Society and the New York Gastroenterological Association. He participated in and directed a number of landmark clinical studies that described the effects of surgical treatment for biliary tract disease on over 20,000 patients. He also studied the natural history of untreated gallstone disease and conducted laboratory investigations on the mechanism of gallstone formation, initially at The New York Hospital and then at Beth Israel Medical Center.
Dr. McSherry is survived by his daughter, Maureen, and his companion, Miriam Moran. His wife of 34 years, Nancy Ryan McSherry, died in 1999.