The Mütter Museum is Philadelphia’s disturbingly informative museum.

The museum’s display of 20,000 provocative items is designed to give a beneath-the-surface perspective of what physicians study. But perhaps the most provocative artifacts yet, in the most beneath-the-surface matter yet, were just unveiled.

Today, the Mutter Museum announced a major new acquisition that will become part of the permanent collection immediately: 46 microscope slides, each containing slices from the brain of Albert Einstein.

Einstein’s Brain is now a very exciting permanent exhibition of the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and may be viewed as part of regular admission.

The path the slides have taken to get to the museum is a sinuous one. The slides were prepared in 1955 in the pathology lab of Dr. William Ehrich, Chief of Pathology at the Philadelphia General Hospital. Five sets of slides were prepared in the lab, and 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 Dr. Allen Steinberg, who gave them to Lucy Rorke-Adams, a Senior Neuropathologist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and longtime Fellow of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Now Dr. Rorke-Adams says, “I think the time has come to turn them over to the College and the Mütter Museum as they are a part of medical history.”

And so visitors to the Mütter Museum will now be able to view these pieces of the legendary Einstein’s brain for themselves.

According to Anna Dhody, Curator of the Mütter, people have asked for years if the museum had Einstein’s Brain on view, hoping to catch a glimpse. At last, they’ll be able to answer affirmatively.

Einstein’s Brain at the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Where: 19 S. 22nd Street

When: The museum is open seven days a week, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Cost: Admission is $14 for adults, $10 for children, seniors, military and students

More info: www.collphyphil.org