OPINION NATURE|Vol 455|9 October 2008

Hidden treasures: Turin’s anatomy museum Some controversial nineteenth-century theories about brain shape and human nature are revealed by an extensive collection of neuroscience memorabilia, reports Alison Abbott.

Cesare Lombroso’s contemporaries sulcus, which separates the primary considered him to be either a genius or a motor cortex from the sensory cortex, madman, or both. A professor at the Uni- is named the ‘Rolando sulcus’ after him. versity of Turin, Italy, from 1876 until his When Napoleon lost the war in 1814, death in 1909, Lombroso was a pioneer of Rolando returned to Turin, where he criminal psychology. But his unshakeable energetically applied his new learning theory that criminals were born rather both to his research and to the museum. than made, and could be recognized by The museum has many valuable their atavistic physical characteristics, objects, but its neuroscience collection TURIN UNIV. MUS. HUM. ANATOMY, went down badly in some quarters. is exceptional. Aside from the stagger- His other unshakeable theory held, ing piles of preserved brains provided ironically, that genius and madness by Giacomini, there are models of the were two sides of the same degenerate brain created throughout the nineteenth coin. In 1897, at the height of his fame, century, which show how knowledge of Lombroso travelled to Leo Tolstoy’s vil- brain anatomy evolved extensively during lage in Russia to gather living proof of this period. The collection also includes the theory — but the undisputed genius a beautiful model from 1883 which, disappointed him by lacking the physical although rather abstract, indicates for the characteristics that Lombroso associated first time that the brain is composed of with madness. In turn, Tolstoy dismissed nerve pathways. There is also a collection his visitor as “ingenuous and limited”, of skulls and death masks — of the great and later described Lombroso’s theories and good, and of criminals. An exquisite as a “misery of thought, of concept and of series of wax human embryos shows the sensibility” (see Nature 409, 983; 2001). development of the nervous system. The great French novelist Émile Zola Giacomini, like Rolando, lived through levelled that Lombroso gathered proof turbulent times. He participated in the selectively: “like all men with precon- struggles to liberate parts of northern ceived theses.” Italy from the Austrians, one of the con- The irrepressible Lombroso also had flicts that eventually led to the unification plenty of opponents back home in Turin Closet genius: Giacomini’s skeleton and unusually shaped brain. of Italy in 1870. During the bloody pro- — most notably the neuroanatomist cess, Turin lost its status as capital city and Carlo Giacomini, head of the University of nineteenth-century Turin, which considered needed to find a new strategy for its future. It Turin’s anatomy museum. In the 1880s, Gia- science to be the new religion. The over- chose science, and massively expanded its uni- comini had developed a ‘dry’ method for pre- crowded glass cabinets are laid out in bays versity. With the burgeoning modern indus- serving brains based on mummification, which akin to side chapels, with paintings of famous tries, Turin also became Italy’s film capital, and he put to lavish use. At least 950 of the result- anatomists — including Andreas Vesalius and museum visitors can watch the first movies of ing specimens are displayed in the Museum of Marcello Malpighi — hanging like saints in living cells made in the 1930s, including one Human Anatomy of the University of Turin, their lunettes. Four marble fonts previously of a chick-embryo nerve fibre reaching out to which reopened last year after renovation, contained floating anatomical preparations find connections. having been closed for more than a century. instead of holy water. There is even an 1897 Giacomini left his skeleton to his beloved Giacomini was a thorough, systematic scien- stained-glass window depicting brain slices museum when he died in 1898. At its feet tist interested in individual variability in the that Giacomini had prepared for microscopy. sits a bell jar containing his brain, preserved gross anatomy of the brain. His analysis of the During the revolutionary years of the according to his own method. In an 1899 crevices, or sulci, of human brains suggested early 1800s, when Napoleon occupied Turin, lecture at Turin’s academy of medicine, a col- that there is sufficient variability among nor- Rolando retreated to Sardinia, stopping league described its anatomical peculiarities mal people to negate Lombroso’s theory that en route to study anatomical wax modelling — including the presence of a very rare double the size and shape of a brain dictate character. and scientific drawing in Florence. During his Rolando sulcus. Lombroso, listening avidly Typically, Lombroso ignored the data. seven isolated years in Sardinia, he developed in the audience, was thrilled. Proof, he cried, The new anatomy museum is designed to modern methods for studying the brain, inte- of Giacomini’s genius and of Lombroso’s own recreate the atmosphere of the original, estab- grating new data from anatomy, physiology theory. ■ lished at Turin’s ancient university in 1739 and and embryology. He is perhaps best known Alison Abbott is Nature’s senior European first opened to the public by Luigi Rolando for recognizing the fixed patterns of sulci in correspondent. in 1830. The design is church-like, in defer- the brain that fuelled the theories of Lom- For more Hidden treasures, see www.nature.com/ ence to the prevailing spirit of positivism in broso and Giacomini. The brain’s deep central nature/focus/hiddentreasures.

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