Last week, I toured Philadelphia's Mütter Museum — the Philadelphia College of Surgeons' astounding collection of pathological oddities — and was treated to a sneak peak at the museum's latest acquisition: 46 microscope slides from Albert Einstein's brain. They were donated by Dr. Lucy Rorke-Adams, one of the College's trustees. Mütter curator Anna Dhody was kind enough to scan one of the slides at high resolution for us, and you can click through the image above to get it at full rez. The slides are now part of the Mütter's permanent collection, and are just another reason to visit this remarkable collection.
The slides were prepared in 1955 in the pathology lab of Dr. William Ehrich, Chief of Pathology at the
Philadelphia General Hospital and the Graduate School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.
Five sets of slides were prepared in the lab, one set was given to Dr. Ehrich by Thomas Harvey, MD, the
physician who performed the post-mortem exam on Einstein at Princeton Hospital.After Dr. Ehrich died in 1967, his widow gave them to Allen Steinberg, MD. Dr. Steinberg gave them to
Lucy Rorke-Adams, MD, Senior Neuropathologist, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Clinical
Professor of Pathology, Neurology and Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, and a longtime
Fellow of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
