Edward Anthony Spitzka Spitzka performed post mortem examinations of the brains of many distinguished American men, including Prof. Edward Drinker Cope, Prof. Joseph Leidy, Prof. Harrison Allen, Dr. William Pepper, George Francis Train, and Major John Wesley Powell. Edward Anthony Spitzka Edward Anthony Spitzka (June 17, 1876 – September 4, 1922) was an American anatomist who autopsied (29 Oct 1901) the brain of Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of president William McKinley. (In 1881, his father Edward Charles Spitzka, a famous neurologist and medical specialist in mental diseases, testified to the insanity of Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President James A. Garfield, at Guiteau's
Charles J. Guiteau insane manner" he had so often observed in asylums, adding that Guiteau was a "morbid egotist" with "a tendency to misinterpret the real affairs of life". He thought the condition to be the result of "a congenital malformation of the brain". George Corkhill, who was the District of Columbia's district attorney and on the prosecuting team, summed up the prosecution's opinion of Guiteau's insanity defense in a pre-trial press statement that also mirrored public opinion on the issue. Guiteau became something of a media sensation during his entire trial for his bizarre behavior, which included his frequently cursing and insulting