2025-01-03
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The brain the Scientist Unraveling the Mysteries of Grey Matter
By Kermit Patterson Alexandra morton Hayward,
a 35 year old mortician turned molecular palaeontologist,
had been behind the wheel of her rented Vauxhall for five hours,
motoring across three countries, when a torrential storm broke loose on the plains of Belgium.
Her wipers pulsed at full speed as the green fields of Flanders turned a blurry grey.
Behind her sat a small black picnic cooler.
Within 24 hours it would be full of human brains.
Not modern specimens,
but brains
that had contemplated this landscape as far back as the Middle Ages
and had miraculously remained intact.
For centuries,
archaeologists have been perplexed by discoveries of ancient skeletons devoid of all soft tissue
except what Morton Heywood cheerfully described as just a brain rattling around in a skull.
At Oxford, where she is a doctoral candidate,