If we were to put together a Boston tour of the weird, the WARREN ANATOMICAL MUSEUM, on the fifth floor of the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, would surely sit atop the list. Intended primarily as an educational experience for doctors-in-training, the museum is home to a collection of the anatomically abnormal. Within glass cases one will find an actual tumor taken from a man’s forehead, an impressively diverse collection of bladder stones, the skeleton of a pair of conjoined twins, a watercolor painting of an arm with gangrene, and, most prominent, railroad worker Phineas Gage’s skull. Gage, you may recall, survived an explosion back in 1848 that sent a 13-and-1/2-pound rod through his cheek and up through the top of his head. According to a corresponding placard, “Gage’s recovery was not a complete success. The once . . . well-liked man became ‘fitful, irreverent, and grossly profane.’” Maybe it’s just us, but how could a man who had a rod through his face end up anything other than a miserable SOB?
WARREN ANATOMICAL MUSEUM | Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, 10 Shattuck Street, Boston | 617.432.6196 | http://lib.harvard.edu/archives/0056.html
