As restoration work by Friends of Benjamin Franklin House began on 36 Craven Street, a Grade I listed house rescued from brink of tottering collapse, a small pit was found in basement room. A human thigh bone was found.

The coroner and police were notified. Excavation continued. More human bone surfaced. And more. And more, until more than 1,200 pieces of bone were recovered.

Since bones were too ancient to trouble Scotland Yard, they are now in care of Institute of Archaeology, where experts have already determined that they range from an old man to a human baby. Several skulls have been trepanned, and arm and leg bones chopped through.

The most plausible explanation is not mass murder, but an anatomy school run by Benjamin Franklin's young friend and protégé, William Hewson. He had been a pupil of most brilliant anatomist of day, William Hunter, but two fell out and Hewson started his own anatomy school - at home of his mother-in-law Margaret Stephenson, just off Strand, where Benjamin Franklin was also a lodger for 16 years.

He had a rich source of subjects at hand: resurrection men could deliver bodies stolen from graveyards to Thames wharf at bottom of street, while there was a weekly public execution at gallows on other side of garden wall.

Benjamin Franklin, who was interested in absolutely everything - he was lucky to escape killing himself or his guests at demonstrations of electricity he was wont to give during dinner parties - must have attended public dissections.

Hewson died young of blood poisoning after he cut himself during a dissection.

Franklin eventually returned to United States, but was estranged from his abandoned family, and separated from illegitimate son who shared his London years when Franklin declared for American independence and son was exiled for his loyalty to England.

The house was less than 30 years old when Franklin came to London and rented best first floor rooms, where he was visited by all leading figures in radical politics, science and philosophy.” (2)

(If all diseases are eliminated, disease is unknown.)

Instant pattern recognition

IA was proved in practice. It had powered Expert Systems acting with speed of a simple recalculation on a spreadsheet, to recognize a disease, identify a case law or diagnose problems of a complex machine. It was instant, holistic, and logical. If several parallel answers could be presented, as in multiple parameters of a power plant, recognition was instant. For mind, where millions of parameters were simultaneously presented, real time pattern recognition was practical. And elimination was key.

Elimination = Switching off

Elimination was switching off - inhibition. Nerve cells were known to extensively inhibit activities of other cells to highlight context. With access to millions of sensory inputs, nervous system instantly inhibited – eliminated trillions of combinations to zero in on right pattern. The process stoutly used "No" answers. If a patient did not have pain, thousands of possible diseases could be ignored. If a patient could just walk into surgery, a doctor could overlook a wide range of illnesses. But, how could this process of elimination be applied to nerve cells? Where could wealth of knowledge be stored?

Combinatorial coding

The mind received kaleidoscopic combinations of millions of sensations. Of these, smells were reported to be recognized through a combinatorial coding process, where nerve cells recognized combinations. If a nerve cell had dendritic inputs, identified as A, B, C and so on to Z, it could then fire, when it received inputs at ABC, or DEF. It recognized those combinations. The cell could identify ABC and not ABD. It would be inhibited for ABD. This recognition process was recently reported by science for olfactory neurons. In experiment scientists reported that even slight changes in chemical structure activated different combinations of receptors. Thus, octanol smelled like oranges, but similar compound octanoic acid smelled like sweat. A Nobel Prize acknowledged that discovery in 2004.

Galactic nerve cell memories

Combinatorial codes were extensively used by nature. The four "letters" in genetic code – A, C, G and T – were used in combinations for creation of a nearly infinite number of genetic sequences. IA discusses deeper implications of this coding discovery. Animals could differentiate between millions of smells. Dogs could quickly sniff a few footprints of a person and determine accurately which way person was walking. The animal's nose could detect relative odour strength difference between footprints only a few feet apart, to determine direction of a trail. Smell was identified through remembered combinations. If a nerve cell had just 26 inputs from A to Z, it could receive millions of possible combinations of inputs. The average neuron had thousands of inputs. For IA, millions of nerve cells could give mind galactic memories for combinations, enabling it to recognize subtle patterns in environment. Each cell could be a single member of a database, eliminating itself (becoming inhibited) for unrecognized combinations of inputs.

Elimination key

Elimination was special key, which evaluated vast combinatorial memories. Medical texts reported that mind had a hierarchy of intelligences, which performed dedicated tasks. For example, there was an association region, which recognized a pair of scissors using context of its feel. If you injured this region, you could still feel scissors with your eyes closed, but you would not recognize it as scissors. You still felt context, but you would not recognize object. So, intuition could enable nerve cells in association regions to use perception to recognize objects. Medical research reported many such recognition regions.

Serial processing

A pattern recognition algorithm, intuition enabled finite intelligences in minds of living things to respond holistically within 20 millisecond time span. These intelligences acted serially. The first intelligence converted kaleidoscopic combinations of sensory perceptions from environment into nerve impulses. The second intelligence recognized these impulses as objects and events. The third intelligence translated recognized events into feelings. A fourth translated feelings into intelligent drives. Fear triggered an escape drive. A deer bounded away. A bird took flight. A fish swam off. While activities of running, flying and swimming differed, they achieved same objective of escaping. Inherited nerve cell memories powered those drives in context.

The mind – seamless pattern recognition

Half a second for a 100 billion nerve cells to use context to eliminate irrelevance and deliver motor output. The time between shadow and scream. So, from input to output, mind was a seamless pattern recognition machine, powered by key secret of intuition – contextual elimination, from massive acquired and inherited combinatorial memories in nerve cells.