The Stone Collector

Last fall I visited the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, where I stumbled across two fishbowls brimming with gallstones. They were donated, according to the placard, by a pathologist named Dr. S. Robert Freedman.

Why, I wondered in an earlier post, would Dr. Freedman keep so very many stones? I couldn’t ask him — Freedman, a pathologist in Los Gatos, California, died in 2021 — so I did the next best thing. I called his wife and daughter.

The collection, they told me, was a conversation piece, one of many curiosities he kept in his office to entice colleagues and their kids to stop by for a chat. It began with one fishbowl and, over the years, grew to fill two. “Pathology is not a social field in terms of having patients who you talk to all the time,” says Sarah Warshauer Freedman, Freedman’s wife and a professor at UC Berkeley. But Freedman was a social person. “This was a way of bringing people in and sharing some pieces of medicine with them.”

Gallstones weren’t the only draw. Freedman’s office also temporarily housed a couple of small animals. The turtle came from a family whose child spent several days in the hospital after she contracted an infection from its tank. (The incident was enough to convince the family they were not turtle people.) The rat, which would sometimes steal pathology slides, belonged to his daughter, Rachel, before she lost interest. (“I was never interested in the pet rat,” Sarah says.)

About 15 years ago, Freedman, went on a business trip to Chicago and visited the International Museum of Surgical Science for the first time. He enjoyed the museum. He enjoyed all museums, in fact, especially odd ones. But he did lament the dearth of information on the role of pathology in surgery. Freedman was on the cusp of retiring, and the museum seemed like it might be the perfect place for his gallstone collection. In 2015 they became part of a pathology exhibit titled “Diagnostic Detectives: Pathology in Modern Medical Practice.”

People collect for all kinds of reasons — to hold on to the past, to create order out of chaos, for the thrill of the hunt. Freedman collected to foster human connection. I can’t think of any better reason to have a fishbowl of gallstones.

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