Brain Storm
Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey took schizophrenia off the couch and into the lab. Now he spends his days at St. Elizabeths probing a single question: What makes people crazy?
Cover Story
Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey collects brains the way other people collect stamps or beer cans. He used to bring some home once in a while, but eventually his wife got sick of brain tissue hogging all the fridge space. Since then, the Frigidaire has been supplanted by 38 commercial-size freezers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) neuroscience center, where Torrey oversees a privately funded research program on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
The neuroscience center is tucked away in Anacostia in a century-old red brick building on the campus of St. Elizabeths Hospital. The building is a beauty, a classic edifice that could grace the cover of an Ivy League recruiting brochure, and Torrey looks very much the part of bearded college professor. Then again, he could also be mistaken for a patient, given his constant presence at the mental hospital for the better part of 20 years.
As he walks the yellowed halls of the William A. White Building, Torrey, 60, looks jaunty and athletic despite a degenerative hip that puts a hitch in his stride. Upstairs from his office, he comes to a door marked "biohazard," which he opens to reveal buckets of brains lining row after row of metal shelves. The brains are Torrey's obsession; he has collected the noodles of more than 200 unfortunate folks who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia since 1994.
Torrey gets excited when he talks about his batch of brains. "There has never been an attempt like this to do a single collection of brains," he says, almost giddily. "This is revolutionary in that sense. The big question is why no one did this before. The disease is in the brain. We need brains!"... Continued 
Issue of Jan. 16 - 22, 1998
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