Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887: Volume 1, Number 3 — John Shaqi
Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887: Volume 1, Number 3
Religion
Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887: Volume 1, Number 3
Medicine -- Periodicals; Phrenology -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
The position of the tentorium can easily be ascertained in your own
head by the fact that where it crosses the median line there is a
little projection of bone called the occipital knob, very prominent on
some persons, barely perceptible on others. After locating the
occipital knob, a horizontal line forward will give us the portion of
the tentorium. When we carry this line forward just over the cavity of
the ear, thus locating the tentorium, we easily recognize below it the
rounded prominence on each side in which the two hemispheres or halves
of the cerebellum lie, with a depression between them on the median
line. To make these and other observations on the head (which no one
should neglect), the hand should be placed firmly on the scalp, so
that as it slides on the bone we feel the form of the skull beneath.
In most persons a distinct depression will be felt along the line of
the tentorium, separating the cerebrum and cerebellum--the cerebellum
being located at the summit of the neck, and extending down about as
low as the end of the mastoid process, which is the large, long
prominence just behind the cavity of the ear.
The cerebellum may be regarded as the physiological and the cerebrum
as the psychic brain, for the cerebellum is void of intelligence and
volition, but has important influences on the body. It may be
considered, like the spinal cord, an intermediate structure between
the controlling and conscious brain and the corporeal organs.
The tentorium does not entirely separate it from the cerebrum, for
anteriorly it is open to permit the passage of the fibres which
connect the cerebrum with the spinal cord and the cerebellum,--fibres
which pass up midway between the right and left ear, so that a bullet
fired horizontally through from ear to ear would sever the connection
of the cerebrum with the bodily organs, producing instant death. This
will be understood by looking at the profile of the interior of the
right hemisphere, on which we see the position of the pons and the
medulla and their relation to the cerebrum by their ascending fibres.
As these ascending fibres correspond to a position just above the
cavity of the ear, and as they are the channels of all muscular
impulses, the reader will perceive that breadth of head immediately
above the cavity of the ear must be associated with muscular
impulsiveness.
The position of the cerebrum in the cranium may be best understood by
sawing the head in two horizontally, taking out the brain, and looking
down into the base of the skull, in which we see anteriorly a shelf
for the front lobes, behind which are the cavities for the middle
lobes, and behind that the rounded cavities for the cerebellum.
[Illustration]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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