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
Another proof that the skull is formed without regard to the brain
is the following: "The bony cabinet and its contents are developed,
to a certain extent at least, independently. This is very clearly
demonstrated by a fact which was observed by Gratiolet, and is too
frequently forgotten. The subject is an infant in whom the cranium
presented the normal conformation. The brain was, nevertheless,
almost entirely wanting."[40]
Dr. Gall was a poor arithmetician, and his biographer says that every
kind of numerical calculation fatigued him. He could not go through
a process of multiplication or division that was at all complicated,
and knew nothing of geometry or of the problems of mathematics.[41]
George Combe said of himself: "Arithmetic has always been to me
a profound mystery, and to master the multiplication table an
insurmountable task.... This faculty in me is, in fact, idiotic."
Again he said: "When a boy, I never could learn arithmetic. At the
end of five years' teaching I could not subtract, divide, or multiply
any considerable number of figures with accuracy and facility, and
can not now do so.... At the present day I can not sum a column of
figures correctly."[42]
With these facts in view, our wonder at finding the theories of
these men at variance with all exact calculation is considerably
diminished. We propose to test some of their theories by arithmetical
processes. We found that the sixty famous men entered in the table of
authenticated brain weights show an average of 51.3 ounces. We now
take all the idiots and imbeciles in the table of "Large Brains and
Small Minds," and find the average 59.4 ounces; so that the matter
is left to stand thus: Ten idiots and five imbeciles average 59.2
ounces; sixty famous men average 51.39 ounces: in favor of idiocy and
imbecility, 7.9 ounces.
The heaviest brain in the table of small minds is that of Rustan,
an ignorant and entirely unknown laborer. He was a healthy man, and
his brain, when it was weighed, was in a healthy condition. Its
weight was recorded by Dr. Carl A. Rudolphi, a Swedish naturalist
and physiologist of Stockholm, who became professor of anatomy and
physiology at Berlin in 1810. It reached the unexampled figure of
78.3 ounces; while the brain of Turgenieff, the heaviest among famous
men, was 71 ounces--showing a difference of 7.3 ounces in behalf of
the inferior mind.
Since writing the above, the following appeared in Tit-Bits, a weekly
paper published in London, England, March 19, 1898:
"It must not be assumed, however, that intellect is in direct
ratio to the weight of the brain; for while the brains of certain
intellectual men, such as ... Dr. Abercromby, weighed more than 60
ounces, a certain Strand newspaper-boy, who was in intelligence
almost an idiot, had a brain which weighed no less than 80 ounces."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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