Thomas Willis

Founded by Ben Franklin.

Everybody knows that guy's name.

The library still is that hospital.

The hospital still exists.

So that kind of started me on trying to think, what is causing this? Obviously, the answer is the diet, the Western diet, the standard American diet to be...

precise.

You guys had some help in that, I'm sure.

But then my epiphany moment came in 2000 with Dr. Lee Dellen, and he's a peripheral neurosurgeon out of Baltimore, Maryland at Johns Hopkins.

Real medicine was doing this.

Famous anatomist Thomas Willis mapped the base of the brain so thoroughly that the arterial ring there still carries his name.

He was a founding figure of neurology, and he also had a preparation for apoplexy that combined powdered human skull with chocolate.

He was mixing a drinking chocolate with human bone and giving it to stroke patients.

A girl condemned for murdering her illegitimate infant was hanged, but revived later under the care of Dr.

Petty and Thomas Willis.

It is an extraordinary story told with a wealth of unpleasant detail in a pamphlet called News from the Dead.

Following the narrative are some dozens of ingenious poems on the subject by the prime wit of the university, including one by Wren.