E.A. Spitzka’s Studies of Exceptional and Deviant Brains

Edward Anthony Spitzka (1876–1922) was a fourth-year medical student at Columbia University when he gained national attention for performing the autopsy of Leon Czolgosz, the man executed for assassinating President William McKinley. Spitzka, an emerging figure in neuroanatomy and brain morphology, was undoubtedly selected for this prominent task due to his father, Edward Charles Spitzka, who had testified on the insanity of Charles Guiteau, President James Garfield’s assassin, nearly a quarter-century earlier.

The younger Spitzka’s career flourished after he took a position at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, where he gained recognition for his studies on the relationship between brain structures and behavior. His particular interest lay in the extremes of human nature—both pathological and extraordinary—and he sought to understand the physiology behind deviance and brilliance. In addition to his academic pursuits, Spitzka served as the editor of the 1910 edition of Gray’s Anatomy, one of the most authoritative medical texts of the time.

The Huntington is fortunate to hold a substantial collection of the Spitzkas’ personal and professional papers, which provide a window into a transformative period in neuroscience, psychology, and American history. Before The Huntington’s acquisition, the collection remained largely unexplored, but ongoing research is beginning to shed light on its significance and much remains to be discovered.

E.A. Spitzka’s fascination with the brain led him to conduct postmortem examinations on several notable individuals, including Major John Wesley Powell, the renowned geologist, soldier, and explorer best known for his leadership of the United States Geological Survey.

Spitzka was also intrigued by the brain of George Francis Train, a wealthy American businessman famous for his eccentric behavior and grandiose claims, including his assertion that he had inspired Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days and his declaration that he was the “dictator of the United States.” Spitzka even had the opportunity to study the brain of the poet Walt Whitman, though no formal analysis was produced after the specimen was accidentally dropped in the lab and shattered.

The collection also documents Spitzka’s numerous visits to Northeastern prisons to attend executions and perform postmortem examinations on murderers, as he sought to uncover the biological roots of criminality. Among the most famous cases is that of Chester Gillette, who was convicted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend, Grace Brown, in 1906 by striking her with a tennis racket and leaving her to drown in Big Moose Lake in upstate New York. His sensational trial became the basis for Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy.

Other significant cases in the collection include that of Frank Henry Burness, who murdered ship captain George Townsend in 1903 over a pay dispute and later confessed to killing at least nine other people.

Also documented is the case of the Van Wormer brothers—Willis, Frederick, and Burton—who murdered their wealthy uncle, Peter Hallenbeck, in 1901 after he foreclosed on their father’s property, leaving the brothers destitute. Spitzka, intrigued by the potential link between heredity and criminal behavior, requested permission from the warden of Clinton Prison to perform the autopsies, noting that the blood relationship of the prisoners made a comparison of their brains especially interesting.

Spitzka’s notoriety for conducting postmortem examinations on criminals made him a target for threats and public scrutiny. Faced with these dangers, academic conflicts, and the pressures of his career, Spitzka became increasingly paranoid and reportedly turned to alcohol. In 1912, he arrived at Jefferson University to give a lecture, carrying two pistols and claiming that his life was in danger. Soon afterward he was placed on medical leave, and by 1914 he had resigned from his academic post.

Despite his extensive research, Spitzka found little conclusive evidence to explain the complexities of criminality or genius. He grew skeptical of the prevailing belief that human behavior could be easily linked to the structure and morphology of the brain, and his work ultimately questioned this reductionist view.

After stepping away from academia, Spitzka joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps in 1917, serving until his honorable discharge in 1919. Tragically, he died from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1922, the same condition that had claimed his father’s life.

The collection at The Huntington provides an invaluable resource for examining the intersection of medicine, criminal justice, and societal understandings of deviance and genius. It offers a glimpse into the ways medical science affects perceptions of human behavior, illuminating our ongoing efforts to understand the forces that shape who we are and why we act as we do.

Joel A. Klein is the Molina Curator for the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences at The Huntington.