# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Phrenology

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​PHRENOLOGY, (from Gr. φρήν, mind, and λόγος, discourse), the name given by Thomas Ignatius Forster to the empirical system of psychology formulated by F. J. Gall, and developed by his followers, especially by J. K. Spurzheim and G. Combe, by whom it was named “cranioscopy," “craniology,” “physiognomy” or “zoonomy.” The principles upon which it is based are five: (1) the brain is the organ of the mind; (2) the mental powers of man can be analysed into a definite number of independent faculties; (3) these faculties are innate, and each has its seat in a definite region of the surface of the brain, (4) the size of each such region is the measure of the degree to which the faculty seated in it forms a constituent element in the character of the individual; (5) the correspondence between the outer surface of the skull and the contour of the brain-surface beneath is sufficiently close to enable the observer to recognize the relative sizes of these several organs by the examination of the outer surface of the head. It professes primarily to be a system of psychology, but its second and more popular claim is that it affords a method whereby the disposition and character of the subject may be ascertained.
History.—That the phenomena of mind are in some measure connected with the action of the brain has been recognized from a very early age of philosophy. It is true that Aristotle describes the brain as the coldest and most bloodless of bodily organs, of the nature of water and earth, whose chief purpose is to temper the excessive heat of the heart, as the cooler regions of the firmament condense the vapours rising from the earth. In his view, as in that of most of the earlier writers of other nations of antiquity, the heart is the seat of life; to it, not to the brain, the Hebrew writers refer thoughts and affections, while they considered judgment as seated sometimes in the head, sometimes in the kidneys. This was likewise the teaching of the ancient Egyptian philosophy; and hence, while many rites were practised and prayers offered for the preservation of the heart of the deceased, there were none for the conservation of the brain. We learn from Diogenes Laertius that Pythagoras held more accurate physiological views, as he taught that the mind and the intellect have their seat in the brain. The theory of Hippocrates was Pythagorean rather than Aristotelian, for, although in one passage in his work De corde he expresses himself doubtfully, yet elsewhere he clearly states that he considers the brain to be the index and messenger of the intellect. The cerebral seat of sense-perception is also taught by Plato, who puts into the mouth of Socrates the theory that the brain is the organ affected by the senses, whereby memory and opinion arise, and from whence knowledge springs. The classic poets also notice this dependence of mind on brain; for example, in the Clouds (v. 1276) Strepsiades accuses Amynias of not being in his right mind, and, on being asked why, responds, “You seem to me as if you had had a concussion of the brain.”
The two founders of anatomical science, Erasistratus and Herophilus, who lived in the days of Ptolemy Soter, taught not only that the brain was the seat of sensation and of intellect, but also that there was therein a certain degree of localization of function. Erasistratus believed that the sensory nerves arose from the brain-membranes, the motor from the cerebral substance. Herophilus was apparently the first who held that the vital forces resided in and circulated from the ventricles of the brain, at least so we gather from Celsus and the other authors who have preserved his views. By the influence of the writings of Galen, which directly teach that the brain is the seat of soul and intellect the Pythagorean doctrine prevailed among the later philosophers. According to the Galenical theory the animal spirits have their origin in the ventricles of the brain, and pass into the heart from which they are conveyed by the arteries through the body. Galen in one place (viii. 159) refers their origin to the brain-substance, but the ventricular theory was that adopted by his followers, some of whom suggested that there was some relation between the shape of the head and the character and disposition of the mind. The Arabian physicians Averroes and Rhazes adopted the Galenical doctrine and developed the hypothesis of a fourfold ventricular localization of faculties, which the Greeks had originated. Avicenna added to these a fifth region. Such of the early Christian authors as referred in ​their writings to the relation of soul to body naturally adopted the teaching of Galen which they accommodated to their theology, thereby conferring on it an importance which rendered correction difficult. Tertullian in a sense expresses his belief in a theory of localization as also at a later period does Thomas Aquinas.
Early in the 13th century Albertus Magnus gave a detailed description of the distribution of mental and psychical faculties in the head. The anterior region he assigned to judgment, the middle to imagination, and the posterior to memory. A somewhat similar allocation was made by Gordon, professor of medicine in Montpellier (1296), who assigned common sensation and the reception of impressions to the anterior cornua of the lateral ventricles, phantasia to the posterior, this power being two-fold (imaginativa and cogitativa), judgment or aestimativa to the third ventricle, and memory to the fourth. Figures of a similar division were given by Petrus Montagnana and Lodovico Dolce still later by Ghiradelli of Bologna and by Theodore Gall of Antwerp. That the “vital spirits” resided in the ventricles was doubted by many, and denied by a few of the anatomists of the 17th century. G. Bauhin in 1621 attacked the old view, and Hoffmann of Altorf showed that, as the ventricles were closed cavities, they could not transmit any material fluid. That these spirits existed at all was doubted by Alexander Benedictus, Plater, and a few others; but they were believed in by the great majority of 17th and even of 18th century medical writers, many of whom conceived that the ventricles were semper pleni spiritibus animalibus flammulis similibus, quorum beneficiis intelligimus, sentimus, et movemus, and the opponents of this view were strongly assailed by J. Riolan and others as revolutionary. Columbus ridiculed the idea that the convoluted surface can have anything to do with intellect, as the ass, a proverbially stupid animal, has a convoluted cerebrum. According to his view, the convolutions are for the purpose of lightening the brain and facilitating its movements. The grey matter of the surface of the cerebrum was recognized as the true dynamic element by M. Malpighi and T. Willis. The latter regarded the convoluted surface of the cerebrum as the seat of the memory and the will, the convolutions being intended to retain the animal spirits for the various acts of imagination and memory. Imagination he described as seated in the corpus callosum, sense-perception in the corpus striatum, and impetus et perturbatio in the basal parts of the cerebrum above the crura. The thalami he regarded as the centres of sight and the cerebellum of involuntary acts. Succeeding anatomists simply varied these localizations according to their respective fancies. G. M. Lancisi placed sense-perception in the corpus callosum, R. Vieussens in the centrum ovale majus. R. Descartes supposed the soul to be seated in the pineal gland, others in the brain-commissures especially the pons Varolii. Meyer considered abstract ideas to arise in the cerebellum, and memory to have its seat at the roots of the nerves.
Of later writers three deserve special notice, as having largely prepared the way for the more modern school of phrenology. J. A. Unzer, of Halle, in his work on physiology extended the pre-existing theories of localization. Metzger, twenty years before the publication of Prochaska’s work, had proposed to make a series of observations on the anatomical characters of the brains of persons of marked intellectual peculiarity, but apparently he did not carry this into effect. In a more special manner Prochaska of Vienna may be looked upon as the father of phrenology, as in his work on the nervous system, published in Vienna in 1784, are to be found the germs of the later views which were propounded in that city twelve years later.
The system formulated by Gall (q.v.) is thus a modern expansion of an old empirical philosophy, and its immediate parentage is easily traced, although, according to Gall’s account, it was with him the result of independent observations. These, he tells us, he began to make at an early age, by learning to correlate the outward appearances and mental qualities of his school-fellows. Gall’s first published paper was a letter in the Deutscher Merkur of December 1798, but his principal expositions were oral, and attracted much popular attention, which increased when, in 1802, he was commanded by the Austrian government, at the instance of the ecclesiastical authorities, to discontinue his public lectures. In 1804 he obtained the co-operation of Spurzheim (1776–1832), a native of Longwich, near Treves, who became his pupil in 1800, and proved a powerful ally in promulgating the system. Master and pupil at first taught in harmony, but they found it advisable to separate in 1813; and we find Spurzheim, several years after their parting, declaring that Gall had not introduced any improvements into his system since their separation (notes to Chenevix, p. 99). “My philosophical views,” he also says, “widely differ from those of Gall.”
In Paris, where he settled in 1807, Gall made many influential converts to his system. F. J. V. Broussais, H. M. D. de Blainville, H. Cloquet, G. Andral, E. Geoffroy St-Hilaire, Vimont and others adopted it and countenanced its progress. Gall visited Great Britain, but the diffusion of phrenology here was chiefly due to Spurzheim, who lectured through the country and through America, and with the aid of his pupil, George Combe, attracted a large popular following. His most influential disciples were J. Elliotson, Andrew Combe, Sir G. S. Mackenzie, R. Macnish, T. Laycock and Archbishop R. Whately, and in America Caldwell and J. Godman. On the opposite side many influential men took up a strongly antagonistic position, prominent among whom were J. Barclay the anatomist, P. M. Roget, Sir Charles Bell, Sir W. Hamilton, F. Jeffrey, H. P. Brougham, T. Brown and Sir B. Brodie. The nature of the system rendered it eminently fitted to catch public attention, and it rapidly attained to so great a ​degree of popularity that in 1832 there were twenty-nine phrenological societies in Great Britain, and several journals devoted to phrenology in Britain and America; of these the Phrenological Journal, a quarterly, edited chiefly by George Combe with aid from others of the Edinburgh confraternity, notably Sir George Mackenzie and Macnish, “the modern Pythagorean,” lived from 1823 to 1847, through twenty volumes. The controversy in many places was heated and often personal, and this largely increased the popular interest. In the Edinburgh Review the theory was severely criticized by Thomas Brown, and afterwards in a still more trenchant manner by Jeffrey. In Blackwood it was ridiculed by Professor John Wilson. Being a subject which lent itself easily to burlesque, it was parodied cleverly in a long rhyme by two authors, “The Craniad,” 87 pages long, published in 1817, while, on the other hand, verse was pressed into its service in the rhyme “Phrenology in Edinburgh” in 1824. The best defence of the system was that by Chenevix in the third number of the Foreign Quarterly, afterwards reprinted with notes by Spurzheim.
The Faculties and their Localities.—The system of Gall was constructed by a method of pure empiricism, and his so-called organs were for the most part identified on slender grounds. Having selected the place of a faculty, he examined the heads of his friends and casts of persons with that peculiarity in common, and in them he sought for the distinctive feature of their characteristic trait. Some of his earlier studies were made among low associates, in gaols and in lunatic asylums, and some of the qualities located by him were such as tend to become perverted to crime. These he named after their excessive manifestations, mapping out organs of murder, theft, &c.; but as this cast some discredit on the system the names were changed by Spurzheim, who claimed as his the moral and religious considerations associated with it. Gall marked out on his model of the head the places of twenty-six organs as round enclosures with vacant interspaces. Spurzheim and Combe divided the whole scalp into oblong and conterminous patches (see the accompanying figures). Other methods of division and other names have been suggested by succeeding authors, especially by Cox, Sidney Smith (not Sydney), Toulmin Smith, K. G. Carus of Dresden, Don Mariano Cubi i Solar, W. B. Powell of Kentucky, J. R. Buchanan of Cincinnati, Hittel of New York. Some, like the brothers Fowler, raise the number of organs to forty-three; but the system of Spurzheim and Combe is that which has always been most popular in Britain.
Spurzheim separated the component faculties of the human mind into two great groups and subdivided these as follows:—
| I. | Feelings, divided into— | Feelings, divided into— | Feelings, divided into— |
| | 1. | Propensities, internal impulses inviting only to certain actions. | Propensities, internal impulses inviting only to certain actions. |
| | 2. | Sentiments, impulses which prompt to emotion as well as to action. | Sentiments, impulses which prompt to emotion as well as to action. |
| | | A. | Lower—those common to man and the lower animals. |
| | | B. | Higher—those proper to man. |
| II. | Intellectual faculties. | Intellectual faculties. | Intellectual faculties. |
| | 1. | Perceptive faculties. | Perceptive faculties. |
| | 2. | Reflective faculties. | Reflective faculties. |
In the following list the locality and the circumstances of the first recognition of the organ are appended to the names, which are mostly the inventions of Spurzheim. Gall’s names are placed in brackets.
Propensities.
1. Amativeness (Instinct de la génération), median, below the inion; first determined by Gall from its heat in an hysterical widow, supposed to be confirmed by many observations, and referred to the cerebellum.
2. Philoprogenitiveness (Amour de la progéniture), median, on the squama occipitis, and selected as the organ for the love of children because this part of the skull is usually more prominent in apes and in women, in whom the love of children is supposed to be stronger than in men.
3. Concentrativeness, below the obelion and over the lambda. This is a region of uncertain function, unnoticed by Gall, but described as Inhabitiveness by Spurzheim, because he found it large in cats and in a clergyman fond of his home. It has since been considered by Combe to be the seat of the power of concentration, whereof he believed Inhabitiveness to be a special case.
4. Adhesiveness (Amitié), over the lateral area of the lambdoidal suture. This region was prominent in a lady introduced to Gall as a model of friendship, and is said by him to be the region where persons who are closely attached put their heads together.
5. Combativeness (Instinct de la défense), above the asterion; it was found by Gall by examining the heads of the most quarrelsome of his low companions whom he had beforehand stimulated by alcohol. It was verified by comparing this region with the same part of the head of a quarrelsome young lady.
6. Destructiveness (Instinct carnassier), above the ear meatus. This is the widest part of the skulls of carnivorous animals, and was found large in the head of a student so fond of torturing animals that he became a surgeon, also large in the head of an apothecary who became an executioner.
6a. Alimentiveness, over the temporal muscle and above the ear. Hoppe describes it as being large in a gourmand acquaintance, and he therefore supposes it to be the origin of selecting food.
7. Secretiveness (Ruse, Finesse), the posterior part of the squamous suture.
8. Acquisitiveness (Sentiment de la propriété), on the upper edge of the front half of the squamous suture. This part of the head Gall noticed to be prominent in the pickpockets of his acquaintance.
9. Constructiveness (Sens de méchanique), on the stephanion; detected by its prominence on the heads of persons of mechanical genius. It was found large on the head of a milliner of uncommon taste and on a skull reputed to be that of Raphael.
The organ of Vitativeness, or love of life, is supposed by Combe to be seated at the base of the skull. To this locality Herophilus referred most of the intellectual powers.
Lower Sentiments.
10. Self-esteem (Orgueil, fierté), at and immediately over the obelion; found by Gall in a beggar who excused his poverty on account of his pride. This was confirmed by the observation that proud persons held their heads backwards in the line of the organ.
11. Love of Approbation (Vanité), outside the obelion; the region in which Gall saw a protuberance on the head of a lunatic who fancied herself queen of France.
12. Cautiousness (Circonspection), on the parietal eminence; placed here because an ecclesiastic of hesitating disposition and a vacillating councillor of state had both large parietal eminences.
Superior Sentiments.
13. Benevolence (Bonté), on the middle of the frontal bone in front of the coronal suture; here Gall noticed a rising on the head of the highly commended servant of a friend, as well as on a benevolent schoolmate who nursed his brothers and sisters when they were ill. To this spot Xenocrates referred the intellectual powers.
14. Veneration (Sentiment réligieux), median at the bregma Gall noted when visiting churches that those who prayed with the greatest fervour were prominent in this region, and it was also prominent in a pious brother.
15. Conscientiousness, Believingness (Forster) unknown to Gall; recognized by Spurzheim usually from its deficiency, and placed between the last and the parietal eminence.
16. Firmness (Fermeté), median, on the sagittal suture from behind the bregma to the front of the obelion. Lavater first pointed out that persons of determination had lofty heads.
17. Hope, not regarded as primary by Gall, who believed hope to be akin to desire and a function of every faculty which desires and left this territory unallocated.
18. Wonder, said to be large in vision-seers and many psychic researchers. A second similar organ placed between this and the next is called Mysterizingness by Forster, and is said to be the seat of belief in ghosts and in the supernatural.
19. Ideality (Poésie), noted by Gall from its prominence in the busts of poets; said to be the part touched by the hand when composing poetry.
20. Wit (Esprit caustique), the frontal eminence, the organ of the sense of the ludicrous, prominent in F. Rabelais and J. Swift.
21. Imitation (Faculté d'imiter), disposition to mimicry, placed between Benevolence and Wonder.
Perceptive Faculties.
22. Individuality, over the frontal sinus in the middle line; the capacity of recognizing external objects and forming ideas therefrom, said to have been large in Michelangelo, and small in the Scots.
23. Form (Mémoire des personnes), capacity of recognizing faces; gives a wide interval between the eyes; found by Gall in a squinting girl with a good memory for faces.
24. Size, over the trochlea at the orbital edge; described by Spurzheim and Vimont as the capacity of estimating space and distance.
25. Weight, outside the last on the orbital edge and, like it, over the frontal sinus. The prominence of ridge here is due to large sinus or a projecting bone. Certain old writers, such as Strato Physicus, located the whole intellect in this ridge.
26. Colour, also on the orbital edge external to the last.
27. Locality (Sens de localité), placed above Individuality on each side, and corresponding to the upper part of the frontal sinus and to the region immediately above it.
28. Number, on the external angular process of the frontal bone, large in a calculating boy in Vienna.
29. Order, internal to the last, first noted by Spurzheim in an orderly idiot.
30. Eventuality (Mémoire des choses), the median projection above the glabella, supposed to be the seat of the memory of events.
31. Time, below the frontal eminence and a little in front of the temporal crest.
32. Tune (Sens des rapports des tons), on the foremost part of the temporal muscle, where Gall noticed a bulge on the head of a musical prodigy of five.
33. Language (Sens des mots), behind the eye. This was the first organ noticed by Gall, as a clever schoolfellow, quick at languages, had prominent eyes. Old authors had noted the connexion between prominent eyeballs and mental development; thus Gazzali and Syenensis Medicus Cyprius place the intellect and soul behind the eyeballs.
Reflective Faculties.
34. Comparison (Sagacité comparative), median, at the top of the bare region of the forehead, where a savant friend of Gall’s, fond of analogies, had a prominent boss.
35. Causality (Esprit métaphysique), the eminence on each side of Comparison, noticed on the head of Fichte and on a bust of Kant; the seat of the faculty of correlating causes and effects.
The first identification of each organ was made by an induction from very limited data, but the founders and exponents of the system have collected all available instances wherein enlargements of each of these regions coexisted with increased powers of the faculty supposed to reside therein, and in some cases they have discovered coincidences of a surprising nature. When, however, such do not exist, a convenient excuse is found by reference to the indefinite article of temperament, or by a supposed explanation of the faculty in question as not simple but produced by the co-operation of other influences. Thus, as Sheridan’s bump of wit was small, he is said not to have been truly witty; but to have had comparison and memory strongly developed. The girl Labrosse (described in Férussac’s Bulletin for October 1831), who exhibited strong amativeness but had a rudimentary cerebellum, is said to have obliterated it by over-use. Thurtell, a cold-blooded murderer, whose organ of benevolence was large, is said to have been generous, as he once gave half-a-guinea to a friend, &c.
The method whereby the sizes of organs are estimated is arbitrary and the boundaries of the regions indefinite. The attempts of Nicol, Straton and Wight to devise mechanical and accurate modes of measurement have not been very successful and have not found favour with the professional phrenologist.
Anatomical Aspect of Phrenology.—The phrenological controversy served the useful purpose of stimulating research into the anatomy of the brain; but we owe very little of solid progress to the advocates of the system. Gall is the only writer of his creed in whose works original observations of value are to be found, and Dr B. Holländer has cited many interesting and carefully recorded anatomical and clinical facts in his writings. Although the study of the surface of the cerebrum is of the essence of phrenology, yet nowhere in the circle of phrenological literature are the convolutions of the brain accurately described; our knowledge of their order and disposition comes from the morphologist, not from the phrenologist. The first real step towards their systematic description was made by L. Rolando, who in 1830 described the fissure to which his name is attached, and very little advance was made until the publication in 1856 of L. P. Gratiolet’s and Huschke’s memoirs. These works for the first time placed the description of the surface of the brain, imperfectly attempted by L. A. Desmoulins in 1825, on a satisfactory basis.
A description of the anatomy of the brain is given under the heading Brain, so it is necessary here only to refer to points not included in that account.
1. Any psychological theory which correlates brain-action and mental phenomena requires a correspondence between brain-size and mental power; and, speaking generally, the brains of those whose capacities are above the average are larger than those of the general run of their fellow-men.
2. Direct measurements of the relative developments of different portions of brains are difficult and troublesome to make; but their importance to phrenologists is so great that it is remarkable that no attempts to obtain any such were made by them. The series given by R. Wagner of the relative sizes of the cerebral lobes of four brains is almost the only record of importance in this direction, and is appended.
From this it appears that the woman exceeded Gauss in perceptive and reflective organs, exceeded Fuchs in sentiment, and fell below the workman in propensities. It must be said, however, that the phrenological divisions do not accurately coincide with the anatomical. It would furnish important physiological data if the brains of men distinguished for special qualities were examined in this or some comparable way.
3. It is important in relation to phrenology to ascertain the constancy of the convolutions. Many varieties in the detail of the surface-patterns have been recorded by Tenchini, Poggi, Giacomini, N. Rüdinger, Cunningham and Sernow, but the general plan is fairly uniform. A still more important question has been recently raised by J. N. Langley, viz. how far identical spots on ​identical convolutions in different brains consist of nerve-cells with precisely the same connexions. The convoluted arrangement results from growth of brain-surface under constraint, hence as the different tracts of surface undergo proportional overgrowth they may fold along different lines. The occurrence of small differences in the rate of overgrowth, testified to by the varieties of the resulting pattern, can hardly fail to cause considerable alteration in the place of definite territories of grey cells. Some method for the determination of the limits of these shiftings of place is required before comparisons can be of value as phrenological data.
4. The comparison of the rate of growth of brain with the development of mental faculties is important not only to the phrenologist but to the psychologist. No observations on this point were made by phrenological writers, who only refer to the first and rather crude observations of the earlier anatomists. We have, however, recently learned from the researches of T. L. W. von Bischoff, Tuczec, Cunningham, and S. Exner many particulars as to the rate and progress of brain-growth. At birth the brain weighs one-tenth of the weight of the body, and averages about 11 oz. For the first year brain-growth and consequently expansion of the skull proceed with great rapidity, the growth during a large part of this period averaging one cubic centimetre daily. This enormous increase is chiefly due to the rapid development of medullated nerve-fibres, which are deficient in the foetal brain. During the second and third years growth takes place more slowly, the occipital and parietal lobes increasing more than the frontal or temporo-sphenoidal. During these and the four succeeding years the base elongates commensurately with the increasing depth of the face. In the sixth and seventh years the frontal lobes grow faster than the parietals, and at seven the average brain has attained the weight of 1340 grammes, being the weight of the body as 1:20. In the period between seven years and puberty growth is slight, but at puberty the whole brain grows actively, especially the frontal lobes. This activity lasts until about eighteen years of age, then diminishes; but the average brain does not reach its maximum size until about thirty, from a little after which period the brain tends to diminish towards senility.
5. The estimation of the relative development of grey and white matter in the several lobes is important to any theory of cerebral dynamics which allocates functions specifically diverse to each separate part of the brain-surface; but no attempt has been made by the phrenologist to obtain precise results in this direction, nor even to determine the physical constants of the two forms of brain-matter. The recently introduced method of Bourgoin and B. Danilewski, based upon the differing specific gravities of grey and white matter, promises to give definite information as to the relative amounts of these forms of brain-matter; but further experiments are needed to perfect the method.
6. The relations, if any, between the alterations which take place in the shape and position of the head and alterations in brain-surface have been speculated on by the phrenologist. Broussais is reported to have said that his organ of causality had enlarged with increasing use, and a list of cases of similar alterations of head-shape is given by Deville (Phrén. Journ. xiv. 32), most of which are simply age-changes, of the kind described by Professor J. Cleland (Phil. Trans., 1870). There are no exact measurements recorded which indicate the occurrence of topical increases of a normal brain in special directions coincident with the cultivation of definite faculties. All the so-called cases are given vaguely, with no measurements, and the careful measurements of George Combe in such cases as were available to him showed no appreciable alterations in adult heads even at long intervals of time (see also Andrew Combe, Phren. Journ. x. 414).
7. The phrenological want of knowledge of the topography of the brain-surface was necessarily correlated with ignorance of the exact relations of the convolutions to the interior of the cranial bones; these have been carefully worked out by E. Huschke, Heffler, W. A. Turner, Cunningham and Reid. Some latitude, however, must be allowed in topography, as the exact relation of convolution of skull varies with the shape of the skull. Giacomini showed that the fissure of Rolando is perceptibly farther back from the coronal suture in dolichocephalic than in brachycephalic skulls, and it is still farther back in the extreme boat-shaped form of long-headedness. Passet shows that there is a slight topographical difference in the two sexes (Arch. f. Anthrop., 1882, xiv. 89), and in the heads of those with a symmetrically-shaped skull there is often a want of lateral symmetry of convolution. Artificial deformations likewise alter the topographical relations of convolutions, and have served not a little to puzzle the phrenologist. Thus, the artificial dolichocephaly of the Caribs having bulged the squama occipitis, they decided that these people must be amiable lovers of children, &c.
8. The existence of structural differences between different areas of cerebral surface is important to any theory of cerebral localization, but no phrenologist has given us any original information on this point. Since the investigation of J. G. F. Baillarger and Bevan-Lewis it has been shown that some local differentiations of structure do really exist. Thus in the convolutions around the fissure of Rolando the ganglion-cells of the fourth layer are of large size (giant-cells of Betz), and in the convolutions of the temporo-sphenoidal lobe a layer of small angular cells (granule-cells) is interposed between the larger pyramidal and the ganglion-cells, so that, while in the parts of the brain above the fissure of Sylvius the gray cortex is for the most part five-layered, below and behind that fissure it is six-layered. There is no abrupt passage from the one to the other, the only sudden transition of structure of the grey cortex being at the hippocampal sulcus; and giant-cells, although of smaller size, and less like those of the anterior cornu of the spinal cord, are scattered over other parts of the cerebral grey matter.
Other local variations in structure have been described by Elliot Smith and other histologists.
The teaching of anatomy with regard to phrenology may be summarized thus: (1) the rate of growth of brain is concurrent with the rate of development of mental faculty; (2) there is some degree of structural differentiation as there are varying rates of development of different parts of the cerebral surface; (3) there is no accordance between the regions of Gall and Spurzheim and definite areas of cerebral surface.
Physiological Aspect.—The theory of some of the older metaphysicians, that the mind, in feeling and reflection, makes use of no material instrument is not now accepted by psychologists. It was advanced by Brougham and Jeffrey as against the theory of phrenology; but the doctrine that the brain is the organ of the mind is now universally received. While it is probable that certain molecular changes in the grey matter are antecedents or concomitants of mental phenomena, the precise nature of these processes, to what extent they take place, or how they vary among themselves have not as yet been determined experimentally; the occurrence of the change can only be demonstrated by some such coarse method as the altered pulsation of the carotid arteries, the increase of the temperature of the head, the abstraction, during brain-action, of blood from other organs as shown by the plethysmograph, or the formation of lecithin and other products of metabolism in brain-substance. As yet no light has been shed on the connexion between the molecular changes in the nerve-cell and the phenomena of thought and feeling. While our knowledge of the anatomy of the brain, especially of the grey nuclei and of the white bands uniting them, has in recent years become much more accurate (see articles Brain and Muscle and Nerve), our knowledge of the physiology of the nerve centres is still indefinite and fragmentary, even when the utmost allowance is made for the experimental work of C. S. Sherrington, A. S. F. Grünbaum, F. Goltz and others; and the hypotheses relating to the division of labour in the nerve-centres is chiefly based on anatomical structure. Certain masses of grey nerve-matter situated in the spinal cord and medulla oblongata are so linked by nerve-cords to organs outside the nervous system which are set apart for the discharge of separate functions that they obviously form parts of the mechanism for the fulfilment of such functions. In cases where these can be subjected to experiment we learn that they are nervous centres presiding over the discharge of such functions; and it has been determined by experiment, or else deduced from anatomical structure, that in those lower parts of the nervous centres which are more directly connected with the segmental elements of the body there is a certain localization of function; hence the centres of pelvic actions, of respiration, cardiac action, and inhibition of vaso-motor influence, deglutition, secretions, &c., can be mapped out in ascending series. As certain of these centres are united by bands of fibres to the larger ​and higher-lying grey portions of the nervous centres there is an a priori presumption in favour of the extension of this principle of localization. This has been premised on metaphysical as well as on anatomical grounds. A. B. Bonnet long ago believed each portion of the brain to have a specifically separate function, and Herbert Spencer has said that “no physiologist can long resist the conviction that different parts of the cerebrum subserve different kinds of mental action. Localization of function is the law of all organization; separateness of duty is universally accompanied with separateness of structure, and it would be marvellous were an exception to exist in the cerebral hemispheres. Let it be granted that the cerebral hemispheres are the seats of the higher psychical activities; let it be granted that among these higher psychical activities there are distinctions of kind which, though not definite, are yet practically recognizable, and it cannot be denied, without going in direct opposition to established physiological principles, that these more or less distinct kinds of psychical activity must be carried on in more or less distinct parts of the cerebral hemisphere.”
For a masterly review of the old and the new association and localization theories, see W. Wundt’s Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie, i. 289 sqq.; also the same author’s Essays, Leipzig (1888), pp. 109 sqq.
There is a large weight of evidence in favour of the existence of some form of localization of function. So little is known of the physical changes which underlie psychical phenomena, or indeed of the succession of the psychical processes themselves, that we cannot as yet judge as to the nature of the mechanism of these centres. So much of the psychic work of the individual life consists in the interpretation of sensations and the translation of these into motions that there are strong a priori grounds for expecting to find that much of the material of the nerve-centres is occupied with this kind of work, but in the present conflict of experimental evidence it is safer to suspend judgment. That these local areas are not centres in the sense of being indispensable parts of their respective motor apparatuses is clear, as the function abolished by ablation of a part returns, though tardily, so that whatever superintendence the removed region exercised apparently becomes assumed by another part of the brain. Experimental physiology and pathology, by suggesting other functions for parts of the brain-surface, are thus directly subversive of many details of the phrenology of Gall and Spurzheim.
Psychological Aspect.—The fundamental hypothesis which underlies phrenology as a system of mental science is that mental phenomena are resolvable into the manifestations of a group of separate faculties. A faculty is defined as “a convenient expression for the particular states into which the mind enters when influenced by particular organs; it is applied to the feelings as well as to the intellect, thus the faculty of benevolence means every mode of benevolence induced by the organ of benevolence” (Combe). In another work the same author says it is “used to denote a particular power of feeling, thinking, perceiving, connected with a particular part of the brain.” The assumption is contained in the definition that the exercise of a faculty is the physical outcome of the activity of the organ, and in several of the standard works this is illustrated by misleading analogies between these and other organs; thus the organs of benevolence and of firmness are said to be as distinct as the liver and pancreas. The mind, according to another author, consists of the sum of all the faculties. In this view the unity of consciousness is somewhat difficult to explain, and consequently there is assumed by others a single unifying substratum, and on this the organs are supposed to act; thus thoughts are defined as “relations of the simple substance, mind, to certain portions of the encephalon” (Welsh, Phren. Journ. i. 206). Gall himself believed that there was but a single principle which saw, felt, tasted, heard, touched, thought and willed (Fonctions du cerveau, i. 243); and the American exponent of phrenology, Caldwell, says “the mind is as single in its power as it is in its substance; it is a quickening and operating principle, essential to all the mental faculties, but does not, by any means, possess them itself” (Elements, p. 16). It is not easy to understand the supposed relation of this hypothetical substratum to the separate faculties acting on it. It must be both immaterial and unconnected with the brain, as the whole two thousand million cells supposed to exist in the cerebral hemispheres are all parcelled out among the faculties, and none are left for the unifying nous.
Each organ is considered as engaged, either independently in bringing forth its own product, or collectively with others in elaborating compound mental states, and according to their several degrees of development and activity they are considered capable of perceiving, conceiving, recollecting, judging or imagining each its own subject. This mechanical conception of the division of labour in the production of the phenomena of mind has the charm of simplicity, but is attended with the difficulty that arises in discriminating the operations of the different organs one from the other. Phrenologists are apt to be vague respecting the limits of the several faculties, as about the boundaries of the separate organs. It was pointed out by Jeffrey that the lines of demarcation between benevolence, adhesiveness and philoprogenitiveness were indeterminate, although the organs are not very close, and the same applies to other organs.
It is unfortunate for the clearness of the definition that, although historically the faculties were the first phenomena noted, independent of and previous to their localization, yet in the definition the faculties are defined in terms of their localities.
The following arguments are adduced in favour of the fundamental separateness of the faculties: (1) analogy—elsewhere in the animal economy division of labour is the rule; (2) the variety of mental endowment observed among children before they are influenced by education, and the inequalities in the mental endowments of individuals; (3) the phenomena of insanity, especially of monomania; (4) the varying periods at which individual faculties attain their maximum development; (5) the phenomena of dreams, and the awakening of a limited number of faculties during them; (6) pain being felt in an organ when it is overtaxed.
Such faculties are supposed to be primary—(1) as exist in some animals and not in others, (2) as vary in their development in the sexes, (3) as are developed in varying proportions with regard to other faculties, (4) as may act separately from other faculties, (5) as are not necessarily simultaneous with other faculties in action, (6) as are hereditary, and (7) as may be singly diseased.
According to the development of their powers mankind may be divided into six classes: (1) those in whom the highest qualities are largely developed and the animal qualities feeble; (2) those with the reversed conditions developed, with large animal and feeble intellectual and moral faculties; (3) those in whom good and evil are in constant war, with active animal and strong intellectual faculties and sentiments; (4) those partial geniuses in whom a few qualities are unusually developed, while the rest are at or below the mediocre standard; (5) those men of moderate endowment in whom some faculties are nearly or quite deficient; (6) those with an unvarying standard of undistinguished mediocrity in all their faculties.
It is perhaps unfortunate that the word “faculty” has been used in this sense of original power by phrenologists. It would have been better to employ, as Mr Lewes suggests, the term ​“function” for the native activity of an organ, and to leave “faculty” for the expression of an acquired activity. “Faculty is properly limited to active power, and therefore is abusively applied to the mere passive affections of the mind” (Hamilton, Lectures, i. 177).
An attempt has been recently made by Dr Bernard Holländer to correlate the doctrines of phrenology with the modern physiological and pathological observations which bear upon the localization of function. In his works The Mental Functions of the Brain, under the sub-title “The Revival of Phrenology” (1901), and in Scientific Phrenology (1902), the author endeavours to bring Gall’s clinical and pathological instances into line with more modern observations. He deprecates the craniology of Gall, as far as it deals with mere “bumps,” and honours him, with justice, as the recorder of many facts worth saving out of the wreck of his system; and he endeavours, though with doubtful success, to establish an unbroken connexion between phrenology, in the Greek sense, and our present knowledge of cerebral localization.
The substance of Holländer’s first work is of two kinds. The one kind is a tabulated statement of many hundred cases of different forms of mania, with injury or disease limited to one portion of the brain; the other kind is a tabulated statement of cases of injury or disease of the brain, followed by perversion, or exaltation, or loss of some definite instinct or faculty of consciousness.
He divides the tabulated cases of mania into three groups: (i) Melancholia; (ii) Irascible Insanity, “Mania furiosa”; (iii) Mania with suspicion and delusions of persecution. For these three groups of cases he lays down the following rules: (i) Melancholia is especially associated with injury or disease of the parietal lobe of the brain, more particularly with injury or disease of the convolutions underlying the parietal eminences of the skull, i.e. the supramarginal and angular convolutions. (ii) Mania furiosa is especially associated with injury or disease of the central portion of the temporal lobe. (iii) Mania with suspicion and delusions of persecution is especially associated with injury or disease of the posterior portion of the temporal lobe.
The second kind of cases, where injury or disease of the brain, strictly localized to one part or another of its grey matter, was followed by perversion, exaltation or loss of some one instinct, habit or faculty, includes cases of kleptomania, cases of voracious hunger and thirst, cases of sexual desire exalted or lost, and cases of loss of certain special memories, as of words, tunes, numbers and the like.
These two collections of recorded cases, taken from a vast mass of clinical and pathological literature accumulated during the past century, have been arranged by Dr Holländer with great industry; so as to extend the limits of the study of cerebral localization, and to advance it from the observation of the motor areas and the special sense centres to the observation of the higher acts and states of consciousness. Modern physiology, from its objective point of view, is engaged over finer and finer issues of microscopic and experimental work; and, from its subjective point of view, is becoming more and more psychological, seeking a higher level of interpretation, and a statement of the departmental life of the brain in terms of ever-increasing complexity. The motor centres, governing the voluntary purposeful movements of the body, are considered to be not simply motor, but “psycho-motor”; the speech-centres are not homogeneous, but are on experimental grounds differentiated into sub-centres for the utterance of words, the recognition of words and the understanding of words; the visual centres are in like manner subdivided according to the consciousness involved in the complete act of vision. There is room, therefore, for a “higher phrenology,” if it can show clear evidence in favour of the localization, in determinate regions of the brain, of the physical changes accompanying certain states of consciousness.
Of the two kinds of cases that Dr Holländer has tabulated, it cannot be said that the cases of mania are convincing. Some of them are altogether beside the mark; e.g. he quotes two cases of melancholia, after an injury over the left parietal bone, which were cured by an operation limited to the scalp (excision of a painful scar, removal of a small nerve-tumour of the scalp); in neither case was anything done to the skull or to the brain, but both patients were cured of their melancholy. Again, the acceptance of these rules as to the localization of these insane thoughts involves the localization of sane thoughts in the same areas of the brain, and this in turn involves assumptions that are wholly unwarranted by our present knowledge. Moreover, cases of mania are so common that it might be possible to find an equal number of cases to controvert his rules: we want consecutive, not picked cases. If 5000 consecutive fatal cases of these different kinds of mania, with the post mortem record of each case, were tabulated, we should then begin to stand on surer ground. Again, though Dr Holländer seems to argue well, where he says that the facial and other movements, induced by direct electrical stimulation of certain convolutions are such as express the mental states which he attributes to those convolutions, yet this argument is insecure, partly because Sherrington’s recent work, on the motor area of the anthropoid apes, has rendered it necessary to reconsider the present localization of the motor area in man, and partly because the interpretation of facial and muscular movements as representing this or that state of the emotions is always precarious.
The second kind of cases, where injury or disease limited to one portion of the brain is followed by perversion, exaltation or loss of some special instinct or habit, is more valuable and more convincing; especially the cases of voracious hunger and thirst, those of true kleptomania, and those of the loss of certain special memories. It is not so easy to believe that the cerebellum is in any primary way associated with sexual desire: its position, its structure and its proved association with the co-ordination of muscular movements seem clearly to indicate that its work is wholly subordinate and complementary to the work of the cerebral hemispheres; and the evidence adduced in favour of its being the “seat” of the sexual impulses hardly amounts to more than a probability that it may transmit or co-ordinate the performance of the sexual act.
Practical Application.—“Die Schädellehre ist allerdings nicht so sehr Irrthum in der Idee als Charlatanerie in der Ausführung,” says one of its most acute critics. Even though no fault could be found with the physiology and psychology of phrenology, it would not necessarily follow that the theory could be utilized as a practical method of reading character; for, although the inner surface of the skull is moulded on the brain, and the outer surface approximates to parallelism thereto, yet the correspondence is sufficiently variable to render conclusions therefrom uncertain. The spongy layer or diploe which separates the two compact tables may vary conspicuously in amount in different parts of the same skull, as in the cases described by Professor Humphry (Journ. of Anat. viii. 137). The frontal sinus, that opprobrium phrenologicum, is a reality, not unfrequently of large size, and may wholly occupy the regions of five organs. The centres of ossification of the frontal and parietal bones, the muscular crests of these and of the occipital bones also, differ in their prominence in different skulls. Premature synostoses of sutures mould the brain without doing much injury to its parts. In such cases there are compensatory dilatations in other directions modifying sometimes to an extreme degree the relation of brain-surface to skull-surface. The writer has found such displacements in extremely scaphocephalic skulls; the same is true of accidental deformations due to pressure on the infantile skull before it consolidates. Artificial malformations alter the apparent skull shape considerably while they affect the relative development of the parts of the brain cortex but little. All these and other cogent reasons of a like kind, whose force can be estimated by those accustomed to deal with the component soft parts of the head, should lead phrenologists to be careful in predicating relative brain-development from skull-shape. Psychology, physiology and experience alike contribute to discredit the practical working of the system and to show how worthless the so-called diagnoses of character really are. Its application by those who are its votaries is seldom worse than amusing, but it is capable of doing positive social harm, as in its proposed application to the discrimination or selection of servants and other subordinate officials. It has even been proposed to use it for the purposes of the guarantee society and for the selection of parliamentary representatives. The sarcastic suggestion which originated with Christopher North of moulding children’s heads so as to suppress the evil and foster the good was actually repeated in good faith by a writer on phrenology, but experience of the effects of malformation leads one to be sceptical as to the feasibility of this mode of producing a social Utopia.
Bibliography.—Prochaska, Functions of the Nervous System (tr. by Laycock, in Sydenham Society’s series, 1851); Gall, Recherches sur le système nerveux, &c. (Paris, 1809), Anatomie et physiologie du système nerveux, &c. (Paris, 1810-1819), Traité des dispositions innées de l’âme et de l’esprit (Paris, 1811) and Sur les fonctions du cerveau (6 vols., 1825); Beryk, Bemerkungen u. Zweifel über die Schädellehre des Dr Galls (Leipzig, 1803); Marton, Leichtfassliche Darstellung der Gehirn- und Schädellehre (Leipzig, 1803); Metzger, Ueber den menschlichen Kopf (Königsberg, 1803); Walther, Neue Untersuchungen der Gall’schen Gehirn- und Schädellehre (Munich, 1804); Kessler, Prufung des Gall’schen Systems (Jena, 1805); Bischoff, Darstellung def Gall’schen Gehirn- und Schädellehre, &c. (Berlin, 1805); Ackermann, Die Gall’sche Gehirnlehre widerlegt (Heidelberg, 1806); ​Himly, Erörterung der Gall'schen Lehre (Halle, 1806); Thomas I. M. Forster, “Sketch of the New Anatomy and Physiology of the Brain,” in Pamphleteer (1815, vol. v., pt. ix, No. 10, reprinted with additions, 1817); Spurzheim, The Physiognomical System of Gall and Spurzheim (London, 1815), Phrenology, or the Doctrine of the Mind (1825), and The Anatomy of the Human Brain (1826); Gordon, Observations on the Structure of the Brain, comprising an estimate of the Claims of Gall and Spurzheim, &c. (1817); Three Familiar Lectures on Craniological Physiognomy, anonymous and satirical (London, Wilson, 1816); G. Combe, Essays on Phrenology (Edinburgh, 1819), Elements of Phrenology (1824), System of Phrenology (1825), Constitution of Man (1827), Lectures on Phrenology by Boardman (1839), and Outlines of Phrenology (1847); Dewhurst, Guide to Human and Comparative Phrenology (London, 1831); Otto, Phrœnologien eller Galls og Spursheims Hjœrne- og Organlære (Copenhagen, 1825); Broussais, Cours de phrénologie (Paris, 1836); Vimont, Traité de Phrénologie humaine et comparée (1836); Noe, Grundzüge der Phrenologie (Leipzig, 1836 and 1856), and Die materielle Grundlage des Seelenlebens (Leipzig, 1874); Macnish, Introduction to Phrenology (Glasgow, 1836); Capen, Phrenological Library (Boston, 1836), Ferrarese, Memorie risguardanti la dottrina frenologica (1836–1838); Watson, Statistics of Phrenology (1836); Azais, Traité de la phrénologie (Paris, 1839), Sidney Smith, Principles of Phrenology (Edinburgh, 1838); Joshua T. Smith, Synopsis of Phrenology; Forichon, Le Matérialisme et la phrénologie combattu (Paris, 1840); K. G. Carus, Grundzüge einer neuen und wissenschaftlich begründeten Kranioskopie (Stuttgart, 1841), and Atlas der Kranioskopie (1863); Castle, Die Phrenologie (Stuttgart, 1845); Struve, Geschichte der Phrenologie (Heidelberg, 1843); Idjiez, Cours de phrénologie (Paris, 1847); Flourens, Examen de la phrénologie (Paris, 1842), De la Phrénologie (1863); Serrurier, Phrénologie morale (Paris, 1840); Mariano Cubi i Solar, Leçons de phrenologie (Paris, 1857); Morgan, Phrenology; Donovan, Phrenology, Struve and Hirschfeld, Zeitschrift für Phrenologie (Heidelberg, 1843-1845); Phrenological Journal (20 vols., 1823-1847); Lelut, Qu'est ce que la phrénologie? (1836), and Rejet de l'orgauologie phrénologique (1843); Scheve, Katechismus der Phrenologie (Leipzig, 1896), Tupper, Enquiry into Dr Gall's System (1819); Wayte, Antiphrenology (1829); Stone, Observations on the Phrenological Development of Murderers (Edinburgh, 1829); Epps, Horae Phrenologicae (1829); Crock, Compendium of Phrenology (1878); Aken, Phrenological Bijou (1839); Hall, Phreno-Magnet (1843); Holländer, The Mental Functions of the Brain (1901), Scientific Phrenology (1902). (A. Ma.)
* ↑ De partibus animalium, ii. c. 7 (Paris, 1629, p. 986).
* ↑ In the Chaldee portion of Daniel (ii. 28, iv. 5, vii. 1) visions and thoughts are referred to the head. For other particulars as to early views see Nasse on the psychical relations of the heart in Zeitschr. f. psychische Aerzte (1818), vol. i. A few of the later medical writers express similar views; see Santa Cruz, Opuscula medica, Madrid (1624).
* ↑ Book of the Dead, ch. xxvi.–xxx.
* ↑ viii. 30; ed. Cobet, Paris (1850), p. 211,—Φρένας δὲ καὶ νοῦν, τὰ ἐν τῷ ἐγκεφάλῳ.
* ↑ De morbo sacro, on Opp. ed. Kühn, i. 612 seq.; also Epist. iii. 824. Among later writers Licetus of Genoa taught the co-extension of soul and body, upon which subject he wrote two books (Padua, 1616). In this connexion may be noted a curious work by Schegkius, Dialogus de animae principatu, Aristotelis et Galeni rationes praeferens quibus ille cordi, hic cerebro, principatum attribuit (Tübingen, 1542).
* ↑ Phaedo, Valpy’s ed. 1833, ch. xlv., p. 128. See also Haller’s Bibl. anat., i. 30.
* ↑ De usu partium, ed. Kühn, iii. 700.—τὰς μὲν οὖν ἀποδείξεις τοῦ τὴν λογιστικήν ψυχὴν οἰκεῖν ἐν ἐγκεφάλῳ, καὶ πνεῦμα ψυχικὸν ἐν αὐτῷ περιέχεσθαι πάμπολυ. See also v. 288, viii. 159, xv. 360. In his Definitiones medicae (467, xix. 459) he says that the brain has a ψυχικὴ δύναμις, but does not specify in what part the power inheres.
* ↑ See Paulus Aegineta, Stephen’s ed. 1567, cap. 62, col. 363, also Actuarius, De actionibus et affectibus spiritus animalis (Paris, 1556), p. 22, c. 7.
* ↑ Comment. in Arist., Latin tr. (Venice, 1550), vi. 73.
* ↑ “Imaginatio quidem in doubus ventriculis anterioribus perficitur. Cogitatio vero in medio expletur. Memoria autem posteriorem possidet ventriculam.” De re medica, Gérard’s trans. (Basel, 1554), i. 9.
* ↑ Lib. canonis (1507), p. 19, and De naturalibus, c. 6.
* ↑ De anima, cxiv. (ed. Franeker, 1597), p. 268.
* ↑ Summa theologiae, ed. Migne, i. 1094, 1106–7. Prochaska and his translator, Laycock (Mind and Brain, ii. 163), charge Duns Scotus with holding this view; probably he did, but he does not express it, as he simply specifies the cerebrum and its root, the spinal cord, as the source of the nerves along which sensory impulses travel. Comment. de anima, i. 515 (Leiden, 1637).
* ↑ Opera, iii. 124, vi. 20 (Leiden, 1651).
* ↑ Lilium medicinae, 101 (Venice, 1494).
* ↑ Avicenna’s fifth region is interposed between imaginativa and aestimativa (De naturalibus, c. vi.). Thomas Aquinas combines the last two, which he says are possessed by the same eminence. On the other hand, he says of ratio particularis, “medici assignant determinatum organum, scilicet mediam partem capitis ” (i. 1106).
* ↑ Physiognomia (Padua, 1491).
* ↑ Dialogo nel quale si ragione del modo di accrescere e conservar la memoria, 27 (Venice, 1562).
* ↑ Physiognomia, 1670.
* ↑ Tabulae element. scientiae (Rome, 1632).
* ↑ Theatr. anat. (Basel, 1621, iii. 314); Caspar Hoffmann, De usu cerebri (Leipzig, 1619). See also Spigelius, De corp. humani fabrica, 296 (Amsterdam, 1645); Varolius (1591), p. 6; Wepfer, Historiarum apoplecticarum potissimum anatomiae subjectorum auctarium (Amsterdam, 1681). See also many of the anatomical works of this age, such as those of Fernel, Cabrol, Argenterius, Rolfinck, &c.
* ↑ Alexander Benedictus, Anatomica, vol. iii. (Basel, 1527). Quercetanus is said by Laycock (following Prochaska)to have assailed this doctrine of spirits; on what ground is not apparent, as he certainly expresses himself as a believer in the old view; see Tetras graviss. totius capitis affect. x. 89 (Marburg, 1606). Possibly Prochaska may allude to an obscure passage in the work of the other Quercetanus (Eustachius), Acroamaton in librum Hippocratis, p. 14 (Basel, 1549), not to the better-known Josephus Armeniacus; but he gives no reference.
* ↑ Opera, col. 22, 89 (Basel, 1625).
* ↑ Joelis opera medica, 22 (Amsterdam, 1663).
* ↑ De re anatomica, p. 350 (Frankfort, 1593).
* ↑ “Epist. de cerebro et cort. cereb. ad Fracassatum,” in Opp., vol. ii. Geneva, 1685.
* ↑ De anima brutorum, p. 71 (Oxford, 1677), “hae particulae subtilissimae, spiritus animales dictae, partium istarum substantias corticales primo subeuntes, exinde in utriusque meditullia,” &c.; also p. 76 seq.
* ↑ Fechner, Elemente der Psychophysik, ii. 396.
* ↑ Some of the medieval views were very fanciful, thus Shabbethai b. Abraham, the earliest Jewish writer on medicine (d. A.D. 959), thought that the spirit of life has its seat in the brain-membrane, expanded over the brain and subarachnoid fluid, as the Shekinah in the heavens arched over the earth and waters. See Der Mensch als Gottes Ebenbild, ed. Jellinek (Leipzig, 1854), and Castelli, Commento (Florence, 1880).
* ↑ Vermischte medicinische Schriften (1764), i. 58.
* ↑ See Laycock’s trans., in Sydenh. Society’s Pub. (1851).
* ↑ Other burlesque and satirical writings were published at this time, notably The Phrenologists, a farce by Wade (1830); The Headpiece, or Phrenology opposed to Divine Revelation, by James the Less; and A Helmet for the Headpiece, or Phrenology incompatible with Reason, by Daniel the Seer.
* ↑ For topographical purposes Broca’s names are adopted as the most convenient for localities on the head.
* ↑ Apollonius Rhodius speaking of the love of Medea for Jason (Argonautica, iii. 760–765) says, δάκρυ δ’ ἀπ’ ὀφθαληῶν ῥέεν ἔνδοθι δ’ αἰεί τεῖρ’ ὀδύνη σμύχουσα διὰ χροὸς, ἀμφὶ ἀραῖας ἷνος καὶ κεφαλῆς, ὑπὸ νείατον ἰνίον ἄχρις, . . .
* ↑ Della Struttura degli emisferi cerebrali (Turin, 1830).
* ↑ Mémoire sur les plis cérébraux de l’homme et des primates (Paris, 1856).
* ↑ Schädel, Hirn, und Seele (Jena, 1856).
* ↑ Magendie and Desmoulins, Anat. du syst. nerveux (Paris, 1825).
* ↑ Revista sperimentale di freniatria (1883), ii. 193; ibid. iv. 403; Archiv für Anthropologie (1879), xi. 289.
* ↑ Neurologisches Centralblatt (1883), p. 457.
* ↑ Weisbach, Med. Jahrbuch. der k. Gesellsch. der Aerzte, xvii. 133 (Vienna, 1869); Merkel, Beiträge z. post-embryonalen Entwickelung des menschl. Schädel (Bonn, 1882); Calori, Mem. de l’accad. di Bologna (1871), x. 35. Cunningham, Cunningham Memoir, Royal Irish Academy.
* ↑ Centralblatt (1880), No. 14; Beiträge zur Biologie (Stuttgart 1882).
* ↑ Martius tells us that the Caribs castrate their own children, fatten and eat them, an abuse of the organ of philoprogenitiveness; see also Garcilaso de la Vega, Hist. des Incas, i. 12.
* ↑ Mém. de l’acad. de médecine (1840), viii. 149.
* ↑ For further particulars of structure, in addition to the authors quoted at i. 878, see Bevan-Lewis and Clark, P.R.S., (1878), and Phil. Trans. (1880 and 1882).
* ↑ See Eugène Gley, “Sur les conditions physiologiques de la pensée,” in Archives de physiologie (1881), p. 742.
* ↑ J. S. Lombard, N. Y. Med. Journal (June 1867), and Experimental Researches on the Regional Temperature of the Head (London, 1872).
* ↑ For cases, see Rochefontaine, Archives de Physiologie (1883), 28; Bianchi, La Psichiatria, i. 97.
* ↑ It is interesting in this connexion to note that in a case published by Professor Hamilton in Brain (April 1884), where a tumour existed on the occipital lobe, the pain was persistently referred to the forehead. Many similar cases are to be noticed among the records of localized brain-lesions. Bearing on this point also it is worth noting, once for all, that in nothing is the purely hypothetical nature of phrenological description better realized than in the accounts of what these authors call the “natural language of the faculties,”—that poets are supposed to touch ideality when composing, musicians to press on tone and time, and painters on form and colour, when in the exercise of their arts! Yet we are gravely taught this in the standard works on the subject.