Harriet Cole donated her body to science and had her entire nervous system removed. No one knows why she donated her body to science, but the contribution she made lives on to this day. She may have been a hospital cleaning lady, but Harriet Cole ended up making perhaps a greater contribution to medical science than any of the doctors she worked alongside. Few may even recognize her name today, but without Cole, our understanding of the human nervous system wouldn’t be quite the same.
Little is known for sure about the short life of Harriet Cole, but what we do know is that she worked as a cleaner at Philadelphia’s Homeopathic Medical College (part of a University today) in the 1880s. Her duties included cleaning the college’s labs and classrooms, one of which belonged to a professor of anatomy. But we can presume that either professor or his lectures made some sort of serious impact on…
