Some people collect stamps. Some collect action figures. Others collect Pogs.
In Denmark, meanwhile, they collect...well, this, apparently:
For years, there had been whispers. Rumors swirled; stories exchanged. It wasn't a secret, but it also wasn't openly discussed, adding to a legend almost too incredible to believe.
Yet those who knew the truth wanted it out.
Tell everyone our story, they said, about the brains in the basement.
Yes, please, do tell.
Kirsten was first hospitalized towards the end of World War II, when Denmark and the rest of Europe were at last on the verge of peace.
Like so many places, Denmark was also grappling with mental illness. Psychiatric institutions had been built across the country to provide care for patients.
But there was limited understanding of what was happening in the brain. The same year peace came to Denmark's doorstep, two doctors working in the country had an idea.
When these patients died in psychiatric hospitals, autopsies were routinely performed. What if, these doctors thought, the brains were removed – and kept?
I'd love to see how that conversation played out between the two doctors. One of them just turns to the other like:
Well, it worked. They started collecting brains. And apparently they just. Couldn't. Stop.
Doctors Erik Stromgren and Larus Einarson were the architects. After roughly five years, said Erslev, pathologist Knud Aage Lorentzen took over the institute, and spent the next three decades building the collection.
The final tally would amount to 9,479 human brains – believed to be the largest collection of its kind anywhere in the world.
That's a lot of brains.
