Other displays in the museum show disease and disfigurement-the results of something gone wrong. These remnants of brain tissue are mesmerizing even though-or perhaps because-they reveal little about the physicist’s vaunted powers of cognition. A magnifying glass positioned over one of the slides reveals a piece of tissue about the size of a stamp, its graceful branches and curves resembling an aerial view of an estuary. The object that fascinates them is a small wooden box containing 46 microscope slides, each displaying a slice of Albert Einstein’s brain. Look closely at the display, and you can see smudge marks left by museumgoers pressing their foreheads against the glass.
But there’s one exhibit near the entrance that elicits unmatchable awe. Nearby, visitors can gawk at hands swollen with gout, the bladder stones of Chief Justice John Marshall, the cancerous tumor extracted from President Grover Cleveland’s jaw, and a thighbone from a Civil War soldier with the wounding bullet still in place. On the lower level the fused livers of 19th-century conjoined twins Chang and Eng float in a glass vessel. The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia houses an array of singular medical specimens.
This story appears in the May 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine.
