The student of anatomy is perfectly well aware that there is not a
single organ of the human body the structure of which does not vary, to
a greater or less extent, in different individuals. The skeleton varies
in the proportions, and even to a certain extent in the connexions, of
its constituent bones. The muscles which move the bones vary largely
in their attachments. The varieties in the mode of distribution of
the arteries are carefully classified, on account of the practical
importance of a knowledge of their shiftings to the surgeon. The
characters of the brain vary immensely, nothing being less constant than
the form and size of the cerebral hemispheres, and the richness of the
convolutions upon their surface, while the most changeable structures
of all in the human brain, are exactly those on which the unwise attempt
has been made to base the distinctive characters of humanity, viz. the
posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle, the hippocampus minor, and
the degree of projection of the posterior lobe beyond the cerebellum.
Finally, as all the world knows, the hair and skin of human beings may
present the most extraordinary diversities in colour and in texture.
So far as our present knowledge goes, the majority of the structural
varieties to which allusion is here made, are individual. The ape-like
arrangement of certain muscles which is occasionally met with [11] in
the white races of mankind, is not known to be more common among Negroes
or Australians: nor because the brain of the Hottentot Venus was found
to be smoother, to have its convolutions more symmetrically disposed,
and to be, so far, more ape-like than that of ordinary Europeans, are
we justified in concluding a like condition of the brain to prevail
universally among the lower races of mankind, however probable that
conclusion may be.
We are, in fact, sadly wanting in information respecting the disposition
of the soft and destructible organs of every Race of Mankind but our
own; and even of the skeleton, our Museums are lamentably deficient in
every part but the cranium. Skulls enough there are, and since the time
when Blumenbach and Camper first called attention to the marked and
singular differences which they exhibit, skull collecting and skull
measuring has been a zealously pursued branch of Natural History,
and the results obtained have been arranged and classified by various
writers, among whom the late active and able Retzius must always be the
first named.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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