Wylie McKissock's dynamism and dedication gave great impetus to the development of neurosurgery in Britain. After deciding that neurosurgery was to be his specialty, he spent time with Harvey Cushing's former assistant Gilbert Horrax in Boston and later with Olivecrona in Stockholm. From the latter he learnt much, particularly the value of radiology in localising brain and spinal cord tumours; this was a specialty little developed elsewhere despite Walter Dandy's invention of air ventriculography many years before.
McKissock was a skilled neurologist but he knew that far more information than neurology could provide was required for proper planning of the increasingly challenging operative procedures to be undertaken. Through his time with the pioneer neuroradiologist Erik Lysholm in Stockholm and his own studies he became a formidable interpreter of radiographs. In later years, after James Bull had returned from an intense period of training in neuroradiology in Sweden to join him, it was a frequent source of wonder and amusement to see McKissock detect clues in radiographs that everyone else had missed.
Wylie McKissock had become famous as a surgical teacher to undergraduates and postgraduates at St George's Hospital when he was registrar and later surgical chief assistant. Those who later became his assistants in neurosurgery found, however, that they were expected to learn by example rather than by direct teaching. Prominent among the opportunities for learning, however, were the regular x ray and "brain cutting" sessions. Then, when he thought the time was right, the assistant was launched (usually alone) into increasingly complex procedures. Like Cushing before him, he was unable to be an assistant without becoming restive. This may be said to typify his professional life, which was devoted to forging his own path to neurosurgical success against formidable odds. He attended to minutiae (often inventing ways to speed the more routine parts of operations, such as the opening and closing of craniotomy or laminectomy wounds) as well as the major matters that required solutions.
On the outbreak of the second world war he succeeded in obtaining the resources to open a neurosurgical department at Atkinson Morley's Emergency Hospital and in turning it into a unit capable of dealing with an impressive number of patients. Assistants were forbidden to refuse any admission that was requested by another hospital. The simple condition of acceptance was that patients would be transferred back as soon as their beds were needed. Later he was instrumental in obtaining the support of Sir Isaac Wolfson in building the Wolfson Rehabilitation Centre adjacent to the hospital in Wimbledon, thus forming an integrated group of services for patients with brain or spinal disease.
McKissock's contributions to improved neurosurgical care were many--some original and some "imported" and applied enthusiastically, such as angiography, cisternal air encephalography, hypothermia, and controlled hypotension. The careful documentation that he insisted on (in a format derived from Cushing's) and the accumulation of follow up data on all patients who had had operations, repaid the considerable effort that was needed.
One of McKissock's ambitions was amply fulfilled: his assistants gained consultant posts far and wide. Some became professors of neurosurgery, which may have pleased him less, as he was very much a "non-academic." Although a brilliantly succinct speaker, he attended few meetings but published many important papers. His skill as a host (wine, food, gardening, and antagonism to bureaucracy were in his list of recreations in Who's Who) was experienced by many. He married Rachel Jones in 1934. She died in 1992. They had two daughters and a son, who survive them.