The Warren Anatomical Museum was the gift of Dr. John Collins Warren, who collected anatomical and pathological specimens. Dr. Warren gave most of his collection along with a $5,000 endowment to preserve it when he resigned his Harvard Medical School professorship in 1847. The collection soon became one of this country's leading medical museums.
After being housed at two previous sites, the museum moved to the Longwood Campus when the medical school relocated there in 1906. The building now known as Gordon Hall of Medicine on the medical school quad was originally designed and constructed to house the Warren Museum. In 1998 the museum collection was placed into storage to make room for research, classroom and administrative office space for the school.
In conjunction with the rededication of the Countway Library, an exhibit of selections from the Warren Museum will be displayed in the library's new Warren Museum Exhibition Gallery on the fifth floor. The Rare Books and Special Collections Department has assumed curatorial responsibility for the museum, which contains approximately 13,000 items, including anatomical models, photographs, medical instruments, and medical memorabilia.
Phineas Gage
The life mask and skull of Phineas Gage (1823-1860) is one of the most well known items in the museum collection. Gage's unique story contributed to early medical knowledge about the relationship between personality and the function of the frontal lobe of the brain.
After an on-the-job explosion blew a 13-pound tamping rod straight through Gage's head, the well-liked construction foreman remained conscious. He was able to talk and even walked to the cart that took him to Cavendish, Vermont where he was treated by Dr. John Martyn Harlow.
As a result of the brain injury, Gage's personality changed drastically. He exhibited himself at Barnum's American Museum in New York during one of his many odd jobs after the accident. Six years after he began to experience epileptic seizures and died, Gage's body was exhumed. His skull, along with the tamping iron, was sent to Dr. Harlow, then in Woburn, Massachusetts. In 1868 Dr. Harlow authored a report on Gage's medical case and eventually donated the skull and tamping iron to the Warren Anatomical Museum.
