Dropping the Ball (or the Brain)

Happened upon this nice bit of historical info (courtesy of my friend Dawn):

The Day Walt Whitman's Brain Dropped on the Floor

Less than a century ago people of outstanding intellectual and creative accomplishment bequeathed their brains to medical schools for posterity's study. In one memorable instance the results were macabre. A lab assistant dropped Walt Whitman's [brain] on the floor, swept up its shattered remains, and threw them away.

Another report puts it this way:

In 1892 Philadelphia’s Wistar Institute obtained the poet’s brain for the collections of the American Anthropometric Society, although the “Good, Gray Poet’s” grey matter was apparently splattered on a laboratory floor by a clumsy assistant.

All I can say is, I guess he was serious when he told us to look for him beneath our bootsoles. Ick.