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Postcards from the Brain Museum: The Improbable Search for Meaning in the Matter of Famous Minds
What makes one man a genius and another a criminal? Is there a physical explanation for these differences? For hundreds of years, scientists have been fascinated by this question.
In Postcards from the Brain Museum, Brian Burrell relates the story of the first scientific attempts to locate the sources of both genius and depravity in the physical anatomy of the human brain. It describes the men who studied and collected special brains, the men who gave them up, and the sometimes cruel fate of the brains themselves.
The fascination with elite brains was an aspect of the scientific mania for measurement that gripped the Western world in the mid-nineteenth century, along with a passionate interest in the biological basis of genius or exceptional talent. Many leading intellectuals and artists willed their brains to science, and the brains of notorious criminals were also collected by eager anatomists ghoulishly waiting in the execution chamber with a bag full of sharp metal tools.
Focusing on the posthumous sagas of brains belonging to Byron, Whitman, Lenin, Einstein, the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, and many others, Burrell describes how the brains of famous men were first collected--by means both fair and foul--and then weighed, measured, dissected, and compared; exhaustive studies analyzed their fissural complexity and cell or neuron size. In various cities in Europe, Russia, and the United States, brain collections were painstakingly assembled and studied.
A veritable who's who of literary, artistic, musical, scientific, and political achievement waited in Formalin-filled jars for their secrets to be unlocked. The men who built the brain collections were colorfu land eccentric figures like Rudolph Wagner, whose study of the brain of Carl Friedrich Gauss led to one of the great scientific debates of the nineteenth century.
In America, the Fowler brothers brought phrenology to the United States and made a convert of Walt Whitman, whose brain was donated to science and disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Eventually, this misconceived phrenological project was abandoned, and with the discovery of new technologies the study of the brain has moved on to a higher plane. But the collections themselves still exist, and today, in Paris, London, Stockholm, Philadelphia, Moscow, and even Tokyo, the brains of nineteenth century geniuses sit idle, gathering dust in their jars.
Brian Burrell has visited these collections and looked into the original intentions and purposes of their creators. In the process, he unearths a forgotten byway in the history of science--a tale of colorful eccentrics bent on laying bare the secrets of the human mind.
In Postcards from the Brain Museum, Brian Burrell relates the story of the first scientific attempts to locate the sources of both genius and depravity in the physical anatomy of the human brain. It describes the men who studied and collected special brains, the men who gave them up, and the sometimes cruel fate of the brains themselves.
The fascination with elite brains was an aspect of the scientific mania for measurement that gripped the Western world in the mid-nineteenth century, along with a passionate interest in the biological basis of genius or exceptional talent. Many leading intellectuals and artists willed their brains to science, and the brains of notorious criminals were also collected by eager anatomists ghoulishly waiting in the execution chamber with a bag full of sharp metal tools.
Focusing on the posthumous sagas of brains belonging to Byron, Whitman, Lenin, Einstein, the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, and many others, Burrell describes how the brains of famous men were first collected--by means both fair and foul--and then weighed, measured, dissected, and compared; exhaustive studies analyzed their fissural complexity and cell or neuron size. In various cities in Europe, Russia, and the United States, brain collections were painstakingly assembled and studied.
A veritable who's who of literary, artistic, musical, scientific, and political achievement waited in Formalin-filled jars for their secrets to be unlocked. The men who built the brain collections were colorfu land eccentric figures like Rudolph Wagner, whose study of the brain of Carl Friedrich Gauss led to one of the great scientific debates of the nineteenth century.
In America, the Fowler brothers brought phrenology to the United States and made a convert of Walt Whitman, whose brain was donated to science and disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Eventually, this misconceived phrenological project was abandoned, and with the discovery of new technologies the study of the brain has moved on to a higher plane. But the collections themselves still exist, and today, in Paris, London, Stockholm, Philadelphia, Moscow, and even Tokyo, the brains of nineteenth century geniuses sit idle, gathering dust in their jars.
Brian Burrell has visited these collections and looked into the original intentions and purposes of their creators. In the process, he unearths a forgotten byway in the history of science--a tale of colorful eccentrics bent on laying bare the secrets of the human mind.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published January 11, 2005
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188 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
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June 19, 2008I was hoping this would be like Stiff by Mary Roach. It makes history and science approachable like Stiff, but I find it lacking the humor and personality that Roach is so good at. I'm reading a few chapters at a time in between other books because it's a slowish and a little dense.
November 15, 2007
Despite an interesting premise, this book was disappointing.
I started reading eagerly, expecting the stories of famous brains' dissections and disappearances right off the bat.
Unfortunately, the author provides a lot more set-up and introduction to the science behind the study of brains than I was interested in. He explains that he doesn't want to get too technical, and then plunges into pages of technical detail.
I was looking for medical secrets of intriguing historical figures and I didn't find it here!
I started reading eagerly, expecting the stories of famous brains' dissections and disappearances right off the bat.
Unfortunately, the author provides a lot more set-up and introduction to the science behind the study of brains than I was interested in. He explains that he doesn't want to get too technical, and then plunges into pages of technical detail.
I was looking for medical secrets of intriguing historical figures and I didn't find it here!
July 17, 2024
H.P. Lovecraft’s more unpleasant ideas seemed to be mostly explained by this book. Highly likely he knew many of the men and studies in here. That’s not a slam of the book’s subject because it is an extremely Interesting history of the progress of studying the brain and how it went from nothing much useful, to the seat of the soul and then location of the mind. Once established the scientific community began to try and figure out how it worked. The story of that progress is full of good stories and characters. It doesn't get bogged down too much in jargon and tells the events clearly. It could have been a chore to read but it all goes down fairly easily. It fills in a big hole in my knowledge of how neuroscience got to where it is. This is mostly arcane knowledge that was once not long an ago the cutting edge.
December 19, 2007
A mention of this book in the 21 Jan 2005 issue of Entertainment Weekly inspired me to check out Postcards from the Brain Museum by Brian Burrell from the local library.
Burrell starts this book in an unusual manner, with the story of the novel Frankenstein, pointing out that it was the subsequent adaptations of this work that introduced the concept of the criminal/insane brain. He ties this into the popular philosophies of the eighteenth century that explored the mind/soul/body relationship, spending a little time on the pseudoscience of phrenology.
From there, we explore the world of the brain societies, popular in the mid to late 1800's. Groups of scientists and philosophers collected brains of the elite (and the criminal), usually to prove a physical basis for genius or depravity. Each chapter revolves around an individual either active in these societies, or one whose brain became the subject for study. Along the way, Burrell provides an introduction into neuroanatomy, and how medical discoveries either supported or disproved the prevailing schools of thought regarding mind vs. body.
The introductory information, however interesting, takes a while to build to the concept of the brain societies, the presumed focus of the book. I've dabbled a bit in this area of science and history, but I still found Burrell's narrative thread a little difficult to follow, as the structure (each chapter focuses on a single person) makes for repetition within the same time period. Within each chapter, he introduces many different individuals who in my mind kept blending together; this was made more difficult when father and son or nephew were both involved in the story. Burrell must have reviewed an immense amount of material for this book... it seems he wants to make sure you know that! The endnotes, appendix, bibliography and index served well enough as proof of his research, IMHO.
Nonetheless, I found this a very interesting look at a small piece of medical and psychological history - the stories about Whitman, Einstein and Lenin added human interest to what could have been an overly-scholarly historical tome.
Recommended to those interested in the study of the human mind as well as the history of neuroscience.
Burrell starts this book in an unusual manner, with the story of the novel Frankenstein, pointing out that it was the subsequent adaptations of this work that introduced the concept of the criminal/insane brain. He ties this into the popular philosophies of the eighteenth century that explored the mind/soul/body relationship, spending a little time on the pseudoscience of phrenology.
From there, we explore the world of the brain societies, popular in the mid to late 1800's. Groups of scientists and philosophers collected brains of the elite (and the criminal), usually to prove a physical basis for genius or depravity. Each chapter revolves around an individual either active in these societies, or one whose brain became the subject for study. Along the way, Burrell provides an introduction into neuroanatomy, and how medical discoveries either supported or disproved the prevailing schools of thought regarding mind vs. body.
The introductory information, however interesting, takes a while to build to the concept of the brain societies, the presumed focus of the book. I've dabbled a bit in this area of science and history, but I still found Burrell's narrative thread a little difficult to follow, as the structure (each chapter focuses on a single person) makes for repetition within the same time period. Within each chapter, he introduces many different individuals who in my mind kept blending together; this was made more difficult when father and son or nephew were both involved in the story. Burrell must have reviewed an immense amount of material for this book... it seems he wants to make sure you know that! The endnotes, appendix, bibliography and index served well enough as proof of his research, IMHO.
Nonetheless, I found this a very interesting look at a small piece of medical and psychological history - the stories about Whitman, Einstein and Lenin added human interest to what could have been an overly-scholarly historical tome.
Recommended to those interested in the study of the human mind as well as the history of neuroscience.
December 21, 2016
Fascinating read - especially how Descartes spent a day in a cabin to rest during an arduous journey and postulated some of the breakthroughs of modern science(e.g., triune brain) is mind-blowing!
Aside from biographical anecdotes, our obsession to map every outcome with some input combination poses a very important question for the present ages. As the so-called "big data" and "machine learning" waves push us towards "black box decisions", we abandon the seeking of causality to gain a pattern-matched correlation. In other words, we do not want to - or even could - know "why" a certain individual was declined a loan, only that she was by the machine that scanned a terabyte of data and thought so. Other than the scale of empiricism, how is that different from "phrenology" which was nothing but a similar attempt to frame all available patterns as signal for personality traits? How is it different from "negative eugenics" that, even in New York, in late 19th century forcefully put so called "mentally retarded" to asylum so they could not procreate? Burrell rightly points out the not so insignificant number of times in history science itself assumed a religious fervor. It is scary!
Aside from biographical anecdotes, our obsession to map every outcome with some input combination poses a very important question for the present ages. As the so-called "big data" and "machine learning" waves push us towards "black box decisions", we abandon the seeking of causality to gain a pattern-matched correlation. In other words, we do not want to - or even could - know "why" a certain individual was declined a loan, only that she was by the machine that scanned a terabyte of data and thought so. Other than the scale of empiricism, how is that different from "phrenology" which was nothing but a similar attempt to frame all available patterns as signal for personality traits? How is it different from "negative eugenics" that, even in New York, in late 19th century forcefully put so called "mentally retarded" to asylum so they could not procreate? Burrell rightly points out the not so insignificant number of times in history science itself assumed a religious fervor. It is scary!
November 24, 2008
Really a pretty good look at the history of phrenology and the people who have delved into it. Far more historically than anatomically based, so we can all avoid the ventromedial this and retrospineal that, and actually learn something about why we think reading bumps on heads is a silly way to determine personal characteristics and life stories. Also, was not expecting so much the Frankenstein tie-in, but that was enjoyable too.
Burrell somehow manages to make very undramatic sentences seem like cliffhangers as he works his way through, which I think helps even if it seems quite silly at times. His writing of the scientific squabbles and differing perspectives are still pretty dry but very informative (Broca, for instance). Worth reading through to the end just for "The New Phrenologists", which if I'm not mistaken includes some healthy skepticism of focusing too much on the brain and may even hint at fMRI as modern phrenology. But that sort of thing will always win you points with me.
Burrell somehow manages to make very undramatic sentences seem like cliffhangers as he works his way through, which I think helps even if it seems quite silly at times. His writing of the scientific squabbles and differing perspectives are still pretty dry but very informative (Broca, for instance). Worth reading through to the end just for "The New Phrenologists", which if I'm not mistaken includes some healthy skepticism of focusing too much on the brain and may even hint at fMRI as modern phrenology. But that sort of thing will always win you points with me.
March 27, 2011
I generally appreciate a good general-interest book about science and the history of science. But while this book definitely has some interesting points to make, it does get bogged down quite a bit in the very specific minutiae of the hitory of brain study. This story would make an excellent magazine article, but I think it suffers in full-length book form, and ends up being a bit too long and even (in parts) dull for the general reader.
However, brains collected in jars are incredibly cool, and this book is worth a look just for that topic.
However, brains collected in jars are incredibly cool, and this book is worth a look just for that topic.
Currently reading
March 5, 2009This book is so much fun. I love pop-science books -- and Brian Burrell has much higher expectations of the reader than the average pop-science writer. I had really never heard about the brain-saving craze before. And the book is connecting all these scientists and intellectuals in time and space in a way that my sense of history often precludes.
September 16, 2020
A brief history of neuroscience. Where the original scientists went wrong (...er, everybody is racist&sexist and HOOBOY eugenics!), but also what WAS clearly brought to light. What fanatics sprung up, major philosophical movements, major scientists in neuroscience, and all their varied contributions to the state of the history and knowledge of the brain.
January 7, 2009
This was a very interesting book about the history of the study of the brain. Psychology enthusiasts might find this interesting, but otherwise I think the rest of you could pass on it. There is a nifty math trick explained on page 73 if you would ever like to wow people at parties.
October 6, 2010
Slow reading because there's really no plot to provide momentum, but still chock-full of interesting historical facts and theories.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews