unseen
3
anomalies and pathologies
A Well Preserved Gem
The Indiana Medical History Museum is the only remaining—well preserved—original building from the vast long forgotten city of Central State Hospital for the Insane. It is a pristinely preserved gem of history, with a tidy herbal garden maintained in back for the purpose of teaching about the historical uses of medicinal herbs. It was the old Pathology lab, where the brains of the mentally ill were dissected upon death in order to learn more about brain anatomy and function, and hopefully gain scientific insight about the patient’s sickness. Overall morphology and any aberrations were noted. The brain was weighed. Then surgical slices were preserved on slides to note possible lesions in particular parts of the brain. Autopsies were performed for medical students in the lecture hall/theatre. Actual brains in jars remain as part of the museum’s collection. Constituents and supporters of the Indiana Medical History Museum point to this building’s significance as the birthplace of modern psychiatry. But disconnected from its past, it is an outlier among the other crumbling buildings on the grounds.
“the 19th-century brains on display [are] a strange reminder of the building’s past as an insane asylum” (IU School of Medicine News, Dec. 2011)
The Indiana Medical History Museum is located in the Old Pathology Building on the grounds of the former Central State Hospital on the near westside of Indianapolis. The museum represents the beginning of scientific psychiatry and modern medicine while the building itself is the oldest surviving pathology facility in the nation and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The museum maintains a collection of scientific artifacts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in a completely authentic setting. Constructed in 1895 and inaugurated in 1896, the nineteen-room Pathological Department Building, as it was then called, is equipped with three clinical laboratories, a photography lab, teaching amphitheatre, autopsy room, and library. (from the website)
BRAIN PATHOLOGY
A Beautiful Anomaly Even so self-described by a board member, the existence of the Old Pathology building seems something to apologize for ... It is the oddball on the old Central State grounds only because of what is absent. It is also disconcerting to the public, perhaps not unlike a lesion discovered in the brain; providing an unclear yet possibly critical insight and connection to the past ... to the living? Like such “lesions” neuropathologists hunted for, the Indiana Medical History Museum seems to express itself as something haunting, yet highly unique ... On a stormy evening or gray Monday it can feel staged.
Lesion