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
Perhaps the most remarkable case in the table of great men's
brains is that of Gambetta, who was behind none of his compeers in
ability, and yet had the smallest brain of all. The first table of
the "Average Weight of the Human Body and Mind," compiled from Dr.
Boyd's researches among the sane, which was based on more than two
thousand post-mortem examinations, gives 45.9 ounces as the average
brain weight of boys from seven to fourteen years of age, and 40.2
ounces as that of boys and 40.1 ounces of girls from four to seven
years of age. And this little brain of 40.9 ounces appertained to
a man, "a lofty, commanding, mental figure, standing out in bold
relief from the crowd of mediocrities which he dwarfs and shadows,"
the embodiment of the French Republic, who steered it through one
of its most perilous crises, "the foremost Frenchman of his time,"
who "established his claim to be placed in the very front rank of
European statesmen," and whose untimely death was spoken of as
"nothing less than the sudden extinction of a powerful individual
force, one of the most powerful, indeed, of such forces hitherto
operating in Europe."
In illustration of the association of large brains with small minds,
we have compiled from various sources of recognized authority a list
of one hundred and twenty-five persons of ordinary or weak minds,
idiots, imbeciles, and criminals, whose brains were generally larger
than those of the distinguished men subjects of the preceding notes.
Of these, Rustan, an ignorant and unknown workman, appears with a
brain weighing 78.3 ounces;[36] the dwarfed Indian squaw who follows
him, of 73.5 ounces;[37] an illiterate and weak-minded man had a
brain of 71.3 ounces;[38] and a congenitally imbecile person cited
by Dr. Ireland, with one of 70.5 ounces.[39] Another imbecile cited
by Dr. Ireland had a brain of 63.2 ounces, and the brain of an idiot
with a large head, eighteen years old, who had an idiotic sister,
weighed 62.8 ounces. The brain of the idiot, No. 56 of the men in
the table, 59.5 ounces, is exceeded in size by those of only five
on the list of famous men, while eleven persons recorded as idiots,
imbeciles, and children had brains heavier than his. An idiot boy
of fourteen years, very malicious, who never spoke, and who nearly
killed his sister with a pick, had a brain weight of 57.5 ounces.
Thirty men out of three hundred and seventy-five examined in the West
Riding Asylum gave brain weights of 55 ounces and upward, showing
that such weights are not so rare as some have supposed. In another
asylum in England one out of every dozen brains examined showed a
weight of 55 ounces or more.
In _Nachrichten_, of Göttingen, 1860, pp. 70-71, Dr. Rudolph Wagner
gave a table of thirty-two persons whose brains he examined, among
whom were five distinguished men; but the largest brain weight
recorded in it, 55.9 ounces, has opposite to it the legend, "Idiotic
grown man."
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