121-240 pp. 9¾ x 8¼ in. Red and tan leather decoratively staped in blind and in gilt, spine titled in gilt. Volume contains about 50 assorted documents, both pasted down and laid-in, plus an additional 12 pages or so of manuscript text in Spitzka's hand. Small signed ownership label pasted to verso of front cover along with "E. A." initials inked to front cover.
The medical school scrapbook of renowned anatomist Edward Anthony Spitzka, M.D. (1876-1922). Notably it was during the period in which he kept the scrapbook, while still a medical student in 1901, that Spitzka was chosen to conduct an autopsy of the brain of anarchist Leon Franz Czolgosz who assassinated U.S. President William McKinley.
E. A. Spitzka graduated from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1902 and became one of the world's leading brain anatomists, performing postmortem examinations of the brains of such distinguished American men as Prof. Edward Drinker Cope, Prof. Joseph Leidy, Prof. Harrison Allen, Dr. William Pepper, George Francis Train, and Major John Wesley Powell.
Material in scrapbook dates from 1896-1902 and includes pasted-down curriculum, course descriptions and schedules, examinations, programs, guidelines, letters, medical school correspondence, etc. Numerous notations and sketches throughout in Spitzka's own hand, along with a recommendation from Columbia for the Degree of Doctor in Medicine. At the time, Spitzka had just published a compelling series of papers on the human brain and was in the fourth year of his medical training at Columbia. It was a highly unusual series of fortuitous events that presumably led to E. A. Spitzka conducting an autopsy on the assassin of the President of the United States while still a medical student.
In 1881 Spitzka's father, eminent anatomist and neurologist Edward Charles Spitzka (1852-1914), was an expert witness at the trial of Charles Julius Guiteau, who was accused of assassinating U.S. President James A. Garfield. Although four American Presidents have been assassinated throughout the course of history (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy), only the assassins of Garfield (Charles Julius Guiteau) and McKinley (Leon Franz Czolgosz) were tried, convicted, and executed for their crime. Each Spitzka went on to a career of note and each made a number of contributions in their respective fields, however their participation in the neurology of the assassins of Presidents Garfield and McKinley remains historically unique. Not only were father and son participants in these landmark events, but these were the only times that assassins of U.S. Presidents were tried and executed.