REFLECTIONS ON THE BRAIN OF ULLIN PLACE

When I was Visiting Professor in Medicine at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in 2003, I was invited by the Professor of Anatomy, with whom I shared an interest in the human hand, to take a look at something in the pathology museum. He thought it might intrigue me. It most certainly did. In a glass cabinet, there was a brain – with a slightly squashed left hemisphere -in formalin. Below the brain was a photo-portrait of a handsome, large-headed man, with floppy grey hair, 21” screen bi-focal glasses, and a wry smile. He was smartly dressed in an un-Australian jacket and tie. This was the erstwhile owner of the brain, Dr Ullin T. Place, whose name the retentive reader may recall from Chapter 1. Beneath the photograph was a brass plaque with the following wording: