These chunks of brains floating in formaldehyde bring to life a dramatic chapter in American medical history. They exemplify the rise of neurosurgery and the evolution of 20th-century American medicine — from a slipshod trial-and-error trade to a prominent, highly organized profession.

Image Credit... The Cushing Center

These patients had operations during the early days of brain surgery, when doctors had no imaging tools to locate a tumor or proper lighting to illuminate the surgical field; when anesthesia was rudimentary and sometimes not used at all; when antibiotics did not exist to fend off potential infections. Some patients survived the procedure — more often if Dr. Cushing was by their side.

Most of the jars contain a single brain; a few hold slices of brains from several patients. Some postoperative photographs next to the jars show patients with tumors bulging from their heads. When Dr. Cushing could not remove a tumor, he would remove a piece of the skull so the tumor would grow outward rather than compress the brain. It was not a cure, but it relieved the patient of many symptoms.

Dr. Cushing, born in Cleveland in 1869, was an undergraduate at Yale and finished his career here as a professor of history of medicine. In between, he went to Harvard for medical school, did his early surgical training at Johns Hopkins and became a surgical professor there, and then spent most of his career as chief of neurosurgery, a new specialty, at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital at Harvard (now Brigham and Women’s).

When he began operating in the late 19th century, a few other doctors were also venturing into the brain, but for the most part the patients did not survive the procedure.