Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Since the mid twentieth century, Albert Einstein's name has become
Speaker 1: synonymous with genius. The German born physicists created the theory
Speaker 1: of general relativity, which changed humanity's understanding of time and space.
Speaker 1: Einstein is considered to be one of the most influential
Speaker 1: thinkers of all time. He reached a level of celebrity
Speaker 1: that few scientists ever do. But as he got older,
Speaker 1: all Einstein really wanted was to be left alone. When
Speaker 1: discussing his last wishes with his family, he told them,
Speaker 1: and I quote, I want to be cremated so people
Speaker 1: won't come to worship my bones. Einstein request suddenly became
Speaker 1: a very important issue. In April of nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: at seventy six years old, he suffered an aneurysm and
Speaker 1: died in New Jersey's Princeton Hospital. His family wasn't there
Speaker 1: at the time, so the pathologist on duty, doctor Thomas Harvey,
Speaker 1: went forward with the hospital's normal protocol for autopsy and
Speaker 1: the remains. But this was not your average autopsy. This
Speaker 1: was Albert Einstein. Starstruck and apparently not thinking straight, doctor
Speaker 1: Harvey did something unimaginable. Rather than focus on Einstein's arteries,
Speaker 1: you know, the actual cause of his death, Doctor Harvey
Speaker 1: cut opened the Nobel Prize winning scientist's skull and took
Speaker 1: his brain. Apparently not satisfied with the gray matter, He
Speaker 1: also cut out Einstein's eyeballs. Doctor Harvey later claimed that
Speaker 1: all of this was for purely scientific purposes, but that
Speaker 1: explanation didn't really add up with his behavior. You see,
Speaker 1: he sent Einstein's eyes off to the late physicist eye
Speaker 1: doctor Henry Abrams, who reportedly just kept them. As for
Speaker 1: the brain, Harvey stored it in a jar and refused
Speaker 1: to give it back to the hospital. Doctor Harvey, once
Speaker 1: a respected pathologist, had become a body snatcher. Einstein's relatives
Speaker 1: didn't learn about his missing organs until two days later,
Speaker 1: when the rest of his body had been cremated. His
Speaker 1: son Hans was furious. Of course, this was a total
Speaker 1: violation of his father's wishes. But somehow doctor Harvey got
Speaker 1: in touch with Hans and explained that he wanted to
Speaker 1: study Einstein's brain in the name of science. Seeing as
Speaker 1: the pathologist already had the brain and wasn't going to
Speaker 1: part with it willingly, Hans gave his reluctant blessing. With that,
Speaker 1: doctor Harvey took Einstein's gray matter to the University of Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: He and other neuropathologists cut it into hundreds of block
Speaker 1: shaped pieces plus thousands of ultra thin cross sections. They
Speaker 1: were then sent to experts all over the country for study.
Speaker 1: Over the following years, information about the great physicist's mind
Speaker 1: was published. One study said that he might have had
Speaker 1: more glial cells than the average person. Glial cells, by
Speaker 1: the way connect and support neurons, so put simply, an
Speaker 1: excess amount might have made Einstein smarter, but that's not proven,
Speaker 1: and a lot of experts think this study should have
Speaker 1: been deemed inconclusive. Another study claimed that the part of
Speaker 1: Einstein's brain responsible for visual thinking was wider than normal.
Speaker 1: Yet another positive that Einstein had an extra ridge in
Speaker 1: his mid frontal lobe, which might have given him a
Speaker 1: better than average memory. But Annadouty, a forensic anthropologist, points
Speaker 1: out the flaws in any modern post mortem brain study.
Speaker 1: According to her and I quote, there's a night and
Speaker 1: day difference between a living brain and a dead brain.
Speaker 1: A living brain has infinite amounts of things you can
Speaker 1: study and learn. It is pretty finite in what you
Speaker 1: can learn from a dead brain. Ultimately, studying Einstein's brain
Speaker 1: in this way is kind of futile. The idea that
Speaker 1: his genius can somehow be reduced to glial cells and
Speaker 1: extra ridges ignores the stuff that can't be quantified, like
Speaker 1: his childhood experiences, his capacity for creativity, his work ethic,
Speaker 1: and countless other factors. Even neurologists agree that intelligence is
Speaker 1: not simply a matter of physiology, so the roots of
Speaker 1: brilliance remain something of a mystery. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that people aren't fascinated by the idea of actually seeing
Speaker 1: the mind of a genius. These days, the majority of
Speaker 1: Einstein's brain is stored and displayed at Philadelphia's Moodor Museum
Speaker 1: of Pathology. It's one of their main attractions, actually, which Einstein,
Speaker 1: who explicitly asked people not to flock to his dead
Speaker 1: body probably would have hated. And as for doctor Thomas Harvey,
Speaker 1: that decision to steal Einstein's brain pretty much ruined his career.
Speaker 1: He was fired from his job at Princeton Hospital, his
Speaker 1: wife divorced him, he lost his medical license. Years later,
Speaker 1: it came out that he was still hiding pieces of
Speaker 1: Einstein's brain in his own house, which sounds horrible and
Speaker 1: it is. But the eyeballs are an even creepier story.
Speaker 1: As far as anyone knows, they're still in the hands
Speaker 1: of Einstein's old eye doctor. Rumor has it that they're
Speaker 1: stored in a safe deposit box somewhere in New York
Speaker 1: or New Jersey. And that's an image I just can't
Speaker 1: get out of my head, Albert Einstein's eyes staring at
Speaker 1: the dark walls of a metal box for all of eternity.
Speaker 1: Can I be honest for a second. I don't like needles.
Speaker 1: The doctor's office makes me nervous. The idea of undergoing
Speaker 1: major surgery, especially something like brain surgery, absolutely terrifies me.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of my fear is unfounded, of course,
Speaker 1: after all, neuroscience has advanced by leaps and bounds over
Speaker 1: the last century alone. Much of that is thanks to
Speaker 1: one man too, doctor Harvey Kushi, also known as the
Speaker 1: father of neurosurgery, the first person to ever successfully remove
Speaker 1: a brain tumor. Doctor Cushing was a brilliant artist, researcher,
Speaker 1: and scientist, not to mention an avid collector of human organs,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to that part in a minute. Doctor
Speaker 1: Cushing's greatest contribution to medicine may have been his use
Speaker 1: of the Bovy technique. You see, prior to the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest obstacles in neurosurgery, or any type
Speaker 1: of surgery for that matter, was bleeding. The minute a
Speaker 1: doctor made an incision. Blood loss became a significant concern.
Speaker 1: Although tourniquets and rudimentary cauterization techniques did exist, they weren't
Speaker 1: always fool proof. That's why in nineteen twenty William T.
Speaker 1: Bovie created the aptly named Bovy Tool. It was essentially
Speaker 1: a pen with a superheated electrical tip. It could create
Speaker 1: an incision while simultaneously cauterizing the wound. Doctor Cushing was
Speaker 1: the first person to use the Bov tool during brain
Speaker 1: surgery back in nineteen twenty six, and almost immediately it
Speaker 1: brought survival rates up from about twenty percent to over
Speaker 1: ninety percent Before doctor Cushing, having your skull cracked open
Speaker 1: was almost a guaranteed death sentence. And while I won't
Speaker 1: argue that neurosurgery isn't scary, doctor Cushing made it a
Speaker 1: lot less dangerous. On top of this, he was a
Speaker 1: tireless researcher and record keeper. He saw thousands of patients
Speaker 1: throughout his lifetime, many of whom had neurological disorders that
Speaker 1: had never been named or even studied before. Doctor Cushing
Speaker 1: kept detailed notes and also took photos of his patients
Speaker 1: before and after surgery to document their symptoms, and if
Speaker 1: the patient was suffering from something that doctor Cushing believed
Speaker 1: would prove terminal, he often got their permission to study
Speaker 1: their brain after they died. And this is how doctor
Speaker 1: Harvey ended up with a collection of over five hundred
Speaker 1: preserved human brains. Remember, genius rarely comes without a side
Speaker 1: of madness stored in glass jars and displayed in his office.
Speaker 1: Doctor Cushing was the proud owner of women's brains, men's brains,
Speaker 1: children's brains. There were brains racked with tumors and others
Speaker 1: afflicted by mysterious, unnamed diseases. He even had a few
Speaker 1: skeletons which belonged to people who'd lived with various neurological conditions.
Speaker 1: When doctor Cushing died in nineteen thirty nine, his family
Speaker 1: was faced with a question that few of us will
Speaker 1: ever have to ask, what do we do with this
Speaker 1: giant collection of brains and bones? And ultimately they decided
Speaker 1: to donate them all to Yale University, where doctor Cushing
Speaker 1: had received his undergraduate degree. For the next few decades,
Speaker 1: this collection helped up and coming neurosurgeons learn and expand
Speaker 1: upon doctor Cushing's work, but as the field of neuroscience advanced,
Speaker 1: the specimens became less and less useful. In nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: doctor Cushing's entire collection was relegated to a basement beneath
Speaker 1: one of Yale's medical school dorms, where it would remain
Speaker 1: untouched for nearly twenty years. Then, in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: some medical students discovered the locked basement door. It wasn't
Speaker 1: too hard to break in using a screwdriver, and when
Speaker 1: they walked into the dark room, they were struck with
Speaker 1: the scent of formaldehyde and then they saw hundreds of
Speaker 1: brains floating in glass jars, all stacked on dusty shelves.
Speaker 1: Sneaking into this room became a sort of rite of
Speaker 1: passage for Yale medical students. Being among the brains was
Speaker 1: equal parts disturbing and inspiring, somehow magical and perverse at
Speaker 1: the same time. It was, as one student put it later,
Speaker 1: and I quote, like a shop of horrors. The overwhelming
Speaker 1: atmosphere was that you're in a place that maybe you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be in, which, yeah, they did literally break in,
Speaker 1: so they were not supposed to be there. But as
Speaker 1: Yale administrators realized the hidden nature of the collection only
Speaker 1: added to its allure, they started thinking about bringing doctor
Speaker 1: Cushing's brains back into the light. In twenty ten, they
Speaker 1: moved the collection into a different basement below one of
Speaker 1: Yale's libraries. These days, the room is known as the
Speaker 1: Cushing Center, and it's a museum where the late doctor's
Speaker 1: curious collection is displayed for all the public to see.
Speaker 1: Oh and there's one more interesting item in the collect
Speaker 1: Doctor Harvey Cushing just so happened to be friends with
Speaker 1: Ivan Pavlov, you know, the guy that came up with
Speaker 1: the famous Pavlov's dog experiment. One day, while the two
Speaker 1: scientists were hanging out, doctor Cushing showed Pavlov the Bobie tool,
Speaker 1: the electrical cauterizing pen that I talked about earlier. Pavlov
Speaker 1: used the tool to write his name on a piece
Speaker 1: of steak. Ever, the collector, Doctor Cushing, took that steak
Speaker 1: and stuck it inside a jar with some formaldehyde, and
Speaker 1: so Pavlov's preserved signature is still on the meat, which
Speaker 1: is now housed in Yale's Cushing collection. So if you're
Speaker 1: ever in the area, stop by to take a look
Speaker 1: at what might just be the world's most curious cutlet.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky and partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at Theworldoflore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.