A Will

Having spent my life in using such brains as I possess in trying to better conditions of humanity, especially women, and having many years ago agreed to will my brain to Cornell (at their request), I hereby confirm that bequest, provided that a depleting illness or some special brain disturbance shall not have produced such brain disintegration as to render it no longer representative of the brains of women who have used their brains for the public welfare, as stated in the request of Cornell as the reason for wanting it, so as to add to the knowledge of the brain quality and characteristics of the "women who think" as against the present statistics on women's brains, which are based on hospital "pickups" and the less fortunate women of the world upon whose brains science has so far based its deductions and conclusions and which it has tabulated and set over against the results obtained from the examination of the best male brains known to the world.

If my brain can be useful to women after I am gone it is at their service through Cornell.

So wrote Helen Hamilton Gardener, author of many charming books (including Pushed by Unseen Hands, An Unofficial Patriot, Men, Women and Gods) only woman member of the U. S. Civil Service Commission. She died a fortnight ago, aged 72.

She had been born a Chenoweth of Virginia, had become a Gardener by nom de plume--a name she did not lose by becoming Mrs. Day, wife of an Army Colonel, now dead.

She was an ardent suffrage worker, a good friend of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Mrs. Stanton used to call her "Heathen Helen" because of her radical views.

She had long espoused the theory that there are no sex differences in the brain. She studied the subject and wrote a paper, Sex in Brain. She gave her full brain* to prove her argument.

*The average woman's brain weighs about 43 ounces as compared to about 48 for a man's brain. The world's record brain weight, 74 ounces, was that of Turgeniev, Russian writer. There are records of a few 60-ounce brains, and quite a few in the 50's (including Thackeray, Daniel Webster, Napoleon). But more significant than brain weight are the convolutions of the brain -- more convolutions mean more surface area, and the brain thinks on its surface.