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Case file s1817 · Literature and art · 1892
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1892
Walt Whitman: Walt Whitman - George Collins Cox
Walt Whitman. George Collins Cox / Adam Cuerden. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
26 March 1892
Place
Camden, New Jersey · United States
Field
poet · Literature and writing on the timeline
Legal tradition
US common law (New Jersey) · Common law
Historical event
The American Anthropometric Society's collection of eminent men's brains
Religion
Walt Whitman: Jewish (recorded as Judaism on Wikidata)
Literature and artBurned papers and destroyed workIndustry and empireNorth AmericaUnited States

Walt Whitman's brain was removed at his autopsy for a brain club and was destroyed within a year

Whitman died at his home on Mickle Street. On 27 March 1892 Dr. Henry Ware Cattell, prosector of the American Anthropometric Society, performed the autopsy under Prof. Francis Dercum and removed the brain for the society's collection of members' brains. The brain was lost. In a 1907 paper in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Edward Anthony Spitzka wrote that it was said to have been dropped on the floor by a careless assistant, and that not even the pieces were saved. Cattell's diary surfaced on eBay in 2012 and was published by Sheldon Lee Gosline in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review in 2014. In it Cattell writes that he let the brain spoil by not covering the jar properly. The diary dates the entry to October 1892 in one account and 15 May 1893 in another†. Cattell blamed his assistant, who was dismissed; one account says the assistant then blackmailed him†. James R. Wright Jr. wrote in 2018 that it is unclear whether the assistant or Cattell destroyed it. No part of the brain survives.

What the law took from it

A body donated or released for study leaves the family's control, and the family cannot recall it once lost.

Sources
  1. pubs.lib.uiowa.eduScholarship
  2. thispublicaddress.comPress
  3. bizzarrobazar.comPress

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Walt Whitman's brain was removed at his autopsy for a brain club and was destroyed within a year,” story s1817, https://www.celebrity.estate/walt-whitman-1892, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Literature and artBurned papers and destroyed workIndustry and empireNorth AmericaCommon lawUnited States