I saw Albert Einstein's brain & other fascinations of the human body: Part 1

After 40 years of being kept in a cider box under a beer cooler, Einstein's brain finally saw the light of day.

Einstein, perhaps the most respected genius of our day and the developer of the Theory of Relativity (E +mc2), the world's most famous quotation upon which much of later discovery is based, died in 1955. His brain was removed--without the family's permission--and unbefittingly stored in that cider box under a beer cooler until the pathologist was allowed to keep it on the condition it be used for scientific research.

That most famous Nobel Prize winning brain then was then scientifically shared but is only on public view at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia and one other place in the world. I'm certain just looking at it made me smarter... but then wouldn't I be able to know how to write a square root sign on my computer. Brilliance I guess, is fickle.

The Mutter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia is quite a fascinating place. Einstein's brain is just one of many medical oddities and artifacts on display. There is a six-foot long colon, filled with what you might expect, that came from a man who sadly, couldn't "go." You just don't see things like that every day.

Soap Lady

The "Soap Lady," exhumed in 1875, is there and she is... well, you'll just have to learn that for yourself.


Then you have a cast of conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker and their liver. Chang and Eng were born in Thailand in 1811 and they toured the United States as circus oddities until retirement. They married sisters and lived two lives sharing time and fathering 26 children between them, quite literally. They lived together and died together, as you might imagine. Today's technology may have easily separated them as their conjoinment at the abdomen is now deemed operable.

Abnormal human development

There is a lot more relating to medical discoveries and cures over the ages with a medical basis that advances through the years and shifting perceptions of abnormal human development.

The Mutter Museum will hold your attention for hours with medical exhibits, skeletons and displays that amaze and educate. It is a 'for real' display of the more scientific view of us.

And if you want to go further, you really should see one of the several body works exhibits that have toured the country over the last dozen or more years. Several of these former traveling exhibits now have home bases in the United States. Body Exhibition and Body Works are two examples showcasing actual bodies preserved in action through a 'plastination' process in whole and dissected ways. They are tastefully done, not gory or sensational, though require some judgement as to age of understanding and are interesting to see if that piques your interest or that of any would-be doctor or medical practitioner.

Einstein, not the bagel

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure of the former."

Preview of Coming Attractions: Next blog post I have a book bonanza of further intellectual and pleasurable reading that will carry your interests farther... books that are fun to read for sure.