Children’s Author Roald Dahl Led Invention of Device to Combat Hydrocephalus

In “Marvelous Medicine: the Untold Story of the Wade-Dahl-Till Valve,” which appears in the May issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery: Pediatrics, lead author Adam L. Sandler, MD, chronicles children’s writer Roald Dahl’s extraordinary and largely unknown contribution to the treatment of hydrocephalus. In the early 1960s, prompted by his infant son’s struggle with the condition following a traffic accident, Dahl joined forces with a British toymaker and neurosurgeons from both sides of the Atlantic to develop an innovative valve and shunt system that would be used to treat more than 3,000 children and ignite a sea change in the field of valve technology.

Dr. Sandler, a resident in the department of neurological surgery at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, was gathering information on hydrocephalus valves when he came across a mention of the Wade-Dahl-Till (WDT) valve. With his background as an undergraduate history major and an affection for the prolific storyteller (author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Matilda), Sandler was intrigued by Dahl’s unexpected connection to the world of neurosurgery. He wanted to learn more, but online searches yielded only vague accounts of the WDT valve. For more information, click here to read the full article.