The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1865-11-03
Blind T9m, the wonderrul musician,
from a.e Herald q Rea.s,aau.

Blind Tom, the Wonderful BIusIeiaD.
Has HIS Head Examined in NeISI
York.
From tte Herald Of Wednesday.
Blind Toms woolly covered Uranium
was yesterday the subject of a phre-
biological examination: Very little
nght was thus thrown on the exception
al development so manifest in TOMS
musical abilities and strange antics.
Inc phrenologist merely found that
Gom'S head was very good average in
all the qualities that the disciples of Gail
and Surzheim have ventured to cata-
logue. There was declared to be good
development of all the faculties that
make man domestic animal and keep
up thatremarkable institution known as
the family; the perceptive and reason-
ing faculties were also found to be good:
there was good time, good tune, good
language and good color, and that
sense of the right relation of thinDs
which is called "order'' was larger than
the majority of heads. This fact
throws some light on Toms peculiar
ties, as it is doubtless owing to this de-
velopment that the blind musician is
able to carry in his mind the relation of
the parts in all the very complicated
pieces of music that he so wonderfully
remembers.
The irrelevancy of Toms bumps may
4OE ny lue llGG Ll0J ms
brain Is comparatively undeVeloped
one-that is, the several qualities have
not felt the influence of cultivation in
his own life. They are as they were in
herlted. His brain is, in most respects,
the brain of his father or mother repro
duced. 1t is impossible to explain in
any other way the development of the
So-caLled organ of color. Tom was born
blind, has been blind all his life, and.
practically, is blind now. He mt present
| perceives light, and can see any
large body near him but this power
has oni ~ been acquired recently. How,
then, should man without ewes have
the organ of color? The fishes in the
| great cave in Kentucky, where there is
no light, have no eyes, and by the same
arrangements fnature we must suppose
that those without the use of their ewes
would be without what could only come
through the sense of sight. But it is
easy enough to suppose that Tom inner
TIED this organ, and that it has not been
obltternted, merely because that, with
other parts of the brain, it has remained
stationary.
But tits sufficiently evident that there
IS quite exceptional distribution of
faculties in Tom, whatever phrenolOgy
may see or fail to see. He carries to
nearly their opposite extremes the SEN
suous and intellectual natures. His
senses are defective. His eyes are near
i ~ uSeleSSj ana ne has an incomplete
control of the organs of speech. His
deficiencies are thus in the very group
of organs with which the negro r9ce is
usually so we'll supplied. And with
these deficiencies he has an unusual
development of certain of the intel
lectual faculties, such, for instance, as
memory. His memory-his power to
retain impressions, especially of must
cal sounds-is not less than Wonderful;
and his exhibition of this power in the
facility with which he repeats perFor-
mances on the piano when once heard
is what gives its greatest interest to his
SednceS. But his strange sensitiveness
to nusic-his nervous frritability, that
renders it impossible for him to keep
himself still while any one plays, and
the remarkable muscular antics that
are the result of this, will always make
him u great curiosity to the public.
The physiological explanation of this
musical wonder probably is, that there
was in early life some accident inside
the cranium-Some event not sufficient
to destroy life, but to arrest the devel-
opment ut the base of the brain; and
this arrested development was compen-
sated by some vagaries of development
in the cerebral hemisphere.