The Warren Anatomical Museum, housed within Harvard Medical School's Countway Library of Medicine, was founded in 1847 by Harvard professor Dr. John Collins Warren, whose personal "cabinet" of unusual and instructive anatomical and pathological specimens are the nucleus of its 15,000-piece collection. The Warren also has objects significant to medical history, such as the inhaler used during the first public demonstration of ether-assisted surgery in 1846.
A rotating subset of the collection is open to the public. Among the Warren's most treasured items, and certainly its most famous, are the skull and tamping iron of Phineas Gage.
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