posterity to hear, "My god! This child is missing part of her brain!"
But how could this be, when her entire skull was intact until he opened it himself?
Hours later, after X rays and scans, and excruciatingly careful dissection, he committed to the record his opinion: "It appears that the brain has been subjected, postmortem, to a procedure which has resulted in the mutilation of the brain and the removal of the deceased's pineal gland . . ."
His voice on the tape sounds astonished.
Detectives Anschutz and Flanck were still at the marina interviewing their suspect. By the next day, their supervisor, Captain Cynthia Giancola, would requisition a computer search to determine if any similar bizarre and awful amputation had ever been reported in any other known homicide.
Nothing would ever come up in the search.
It appeared to be a unique theft.
'The pineal gland is the most mysterious organ in the human body."
Chief Medical Examiner Strough found himself explaining to people as diverse as the police, the prosecutors, defense attorneys, the victim's family, psychologists, jailers, and journalists, and eventually to a jury.
It was mysterious enough,in fact, that he had to refresh his memory by looking up everything he could find out about it. He wanted to be able to speak about it with some expertise, although he is the first to say that expertise is not the word anybody can easily apply to their knowledge of the pineal.
As he explained at the first press conference: "Its name comes from the Latin for pine cone, because that is what it resembles: a tiny, fleshy pine cone. In the seventeenth century, the French philosopher Rene Descartes declared it to be the seat of the soul. It was in the human pineal gland, he claimed, which was located deep in the folds of the brain, that a dualist world of matter and spirit converged, it was there where the creative impulses of the invisible world of thought and spirit were magically transformed into the visible world of real things. Only humans had souls, Descartes declared, because only humans had pineal glands. He was wrong about that, as about some other things. Vertebrates have pineal glands. But to this day, science does not know a whole lot more about the purpose or function of the pineal than he did. We know it is part of the endocrine system, which also includes the pituitary, the thyroid, and other glands, and which secrete hormones. We know its function has something to do with light, and sleep, and sexual maturation, but as of the turn of the twenty-first century, we still don't know much else about it."
When his listeners still looked baffled, he continued: "Picture a tiny, tiny pine cone. Imagine that this object is grayish in color. Like a pine cone, it is vaguely pointed at one end, larger and rounded at the other, and the whole thing is smaller than your littlest fingernail. Now place this thing in the center of your head, got that? Put it right in the middle of your brain, so to speak, although please understand that the pineal is not actually part of your brain, but rather, a part of your endocrine—your hormonal—system."
'You mean, like our sweat glands?" he was asked.
"Exactly. And our pituitary gland, and gonads. Endocrine glands secrete hormones, and in the case of the pineal gland, the hormone it secretes is melatonin."
"The stuff that helps us go to sleep?"
"Yes, although we think it does other things as well. It appears to regulate sexual maturity, for one thing. The pineal gland is larger in a child under the age of six than it is in an adult, and in the small child it secretes more of the hormone melatonin, which seems to have the effect of delaying the onset of sexual maturity. In the rare cases in which a child has a pineal gland that is smaller than normal for his or her age, that child ages faster sexually than their peers. The secretion of the hormone seems to be affected by the seasons, and by the available light. More light, more secretion
But how could this be, when her entire skull was intact until he opened it himself?
Hours later, after X rays and scans, and excruciatingly careful dissection, he committed to the record his opinion: "It appears that the brain has been subjected, postmortem, to a procedure which has resulted in the mutilation of the brain and the removal of the deceased's pineal gland . . ."
His voice on the tape sounds astonished.
Detectives Anschutz and Flanck were still at the marina interviewing their suspect. By the next day, their supervisor, Captain Cynthia Giancola, would requisition a computer search to determine if any similar bizarre and awful amputation had ever been reported in any other known homicide.
Nothing would ever come up in the search.
It appeared to be a unique theft.
'The pineal gland is the most mysterious organ in the human body."
Chief Medical Examiner Strough found himself explaining to people as diverse as the police, the prosecutors, defense attorneys, the victim's family, psychologists, jailers, and journalists, and eventually to a jury.
It was mysterious enough,in fact, that he had to refresh his memory by looking up everything he could find out about it. He wanted to be able to speak about it with some expertise, although he is the first to say that expertise is not the word anybody can easily apply to their knowledge of the pineal.
As he explained at the first press conference: "Its name comes from the Latin for pine cone, because that is what it resembles: a tiny, fleshy pine cone. In the seventeenth century, the French philosopher Rene Descartes declared it to be the seat of the soul. It was in the human pineal gland, he claimed, which was located deep in the folds of the brain, that a dualist world of matter and spirit converged, it was there where the creative impulses of the invisible world of thought and spirit were magically transformed into the visible world of real things. Only humans had souls, Descartes declared, because only humans had pineal glands. He was wrong about that, as about some other things. Vertebrates have pineal glands. But to this day, science does not know a whole lot more about the purpose or function of the pineal than he did. We know it is part of the endocrine system, which also includes the pituitary, the thyroid, and other glands, and which secrete hormones. We know its function has something to do with light, and sleep, and sexual maturation, but as of the turn of the twenty-first century, we still don't know much else about it."
When his listeners still looked baffled, he continued: "Picture a tiny, tiny pine cone. Imagine that this object is grayish in color. Like a pine cone, it is vaguely pointed at one end, larger and rounded at the other, and the whole thing is smaller than your littlest fingernail. Now place this thing in the center of your head, got that? Put it right in the middle of your brain, so to speak, although please understand that the pineal is not actually part of your brain, but rather, a part of your endocrine—your hormonal—system."
'You mean, like our sweat glands?" he was asked.
"Exactly. And our pituitary gland, and gonads. Endocrine glands secrete hormones, and in the case of the pineal gland, the hormone it secretes is melatonin."
"The stuff that helps us go to sleep?"
"Yes, although we think it does other things as well. It appears to regulate sexual maturity, for one thing. The pineal gland is larger in a child under the age of six than it is in an adult, and in the small child it secretes more of the hormone melatonin, which seems to have the effect of delaying the onset of sexual maturity. In the rare cases in which a child has a pineal gland that is smaller than normal for his or her age, that child ages faster sexually than their peers. The secretion of the hormone seems to be affected by the seasons, and by the available light. More light, more secretion
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