Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898: Volume LIV, No. 2, December 1898Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898: Volume LIV, No. 2, December 1898
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The table goes to illustrate a general rule which I discovered and
published several years ago, that larger brains appertain to natives
of colder climates. Dr. John Abercrombie, for instance, was born
at Aberdeen, Scotland, on the German Sea, and farther north than
any part of the United States. Sir Ralph Abercromby was born in
the county of Clackmannan, Scotland, where it is far colder than
any part of southern Europe. Lord Francis Jeffrey first saw light
in Edinburgh. General Butler was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire.
Ivan Turgenieff, with the heaviest brain of all, was a native of
cold, inhospitable Russia. Dr. Franz Joseph Gall (brain weight 42.2
ounces)[35] was born in Würtemberg, in southern Germany, passed
most of his life in Vienna and Paris, and, being a student, spent
much of his time indoors. Gambetta was born at Cahors, France, of
Italian parents. This climatological view of the size of brains
is confirmed by a paper, "Crania," of the Philadelphia Academy of
Sciences, which gives as the average size, in cubic inches, of the
cranial cavities of various nationalities, taking the results of many
measurements: Lapps, 102; Swedes, 100; Anglo-Saxons, 96; Finns, 95;
Anglo-Americans, 94; Germans, 92; Celts, 88; Malays, 86; Chinese, 85;
Tombs of Gizeh, 84; embalmed Semitic, 82; Egyptians, 80; Fellah, 79;
Bengalese, 78.
A table of average brain weights of various nationalities,
compiled from Topinard's and Manouvrier's works and other standard
anthropological publications, illustrates the same tendency toward
greater brain weights in colder countries. One of its results is to
show that the colder air of the United States produces larger brains
in the negroes than the warm air of Africa. The table further shows,
in the comparisons of Hindus and African negroes, that the brains are
smallest in the warmest countries, irrespective of race or nation;
and that the largest average attained is in Scotland, where it is
never extremely warm.
The measurement of the cranial cavity is a very uncertain gauge of
the size of the brain, for the cerebro-spinal fluid may occupy a
large share of the space. Weighing the brain is without doubt the
only scientifically certain method of determining its size and mass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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