The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-12-06
Is THE SOUL FOUND?
SAN FRANCISCO PHYSICIANS ON
DR. STEVENS DISCOVERY.

Futile Efforts TO Give Airy Nothing
hocal Habitation and a Name.
From the st. Louis Republic.
The claim that DIR. A h Stevens of Phil.
adelphia has discovered the seat of the soul
has attracted much attention from the medi.
cal profession. DIR. Stevens thus states his
case: 1.-THE soul is located in the corpus
callosum, little spongy body situated at
the base Of the brain, which has defied the
efforts of physicians in their endeavors to
ascertain its uses in the human anotomy.
The corpus callosum is the seat Of the i'm
perishable mind, and is the great reservoir
and storehouse of electricity, which is alb
stracted from the blood in the arteries and
conveyed through the nerves up the spinal
cord to the corpus callosum."
EAs is well known, the cerebrum. or great
brain, which is ovoid in shape and which
includes the convOlutions, the corpora
strata, the optic thalami and the corpora
duadrigemina, is divided in the top, rear
and front into two hemispheres by deep
longitudinal assure. But below the two
hemispheres are connected by band of
white nerve fibres which is called the
corpus callosum. This band is not con-
nected with the whole length of the hemis-
pheres, but extends nearer to the anterior
than to the posterior ends. Thus the corpus
callosum is connecting structure which
brings the covolution of the two hemis-
pheres of the brain into anatomical and
physiological relations with each other and
enables them to act in harmony. 1t is in
this body that DIR. Stevens locates the soul
WHAT THE DOCTORS SAY.
Says the San Francisco Examiner: Sew
eral prominent physicians in town we're
asked their opinion on this most recent
startling revelation in the domain of sci
ence, aud among Others DIR. W. f. McNutt
expressed himself as follows:
at is impossible to locate definitely the
mind or the soul. All we know is that the
brain is the material through which the
mind operates. What we usually designate
by the terms soul or mind is immaterial, and
we must know something more definite
about material bodies before we attempt to
locate the immaterial. believe that Dr.
Stevens proposition is to be classed under
the head of speculative philosophy and not
under science. The mind itself ceases to
exist just as soon as the physiological ac-
ton of the brain ceases. But there
is something else besides mind.
which is supposed to continue to exist after
the cessation of the physiological action of
the brain, to which we usually give the
name soul. This, however, is to great
extent a matter of faith, and still more one
of speculation. We probably know more
about mind than we do about soul, which,
after all, is only name for an idea. In
recent years the localization of various
parts of the brain has been carried to a very
great extent, partly by pathological condi-
tons, partly by experiments on lower ami
mails. The corpus callosum is altogether
wanting in fish, reptiles and birds, and is
partly or completely wanting in those
mammals whose cerebrum is formed on the
least complex plan-the rodents and MARSH
pals
1.-THE experiment does not throw any
light upon the particular functions of the
corpus callosum and other commissures,
since they can scarcely be divided without
severe general injury. DR.. Stevens theory
is nothing new. Years and years ago the
corpus callosum was regarded as the seat Of
the soul by La Peyronle. 1t would be III
teresting to know whether my Philadelphia
colleague made his discovery by the dis
section of a dead body or whether he ex-
perimented on living one. The proper
thing for him to do would be for him to
publish to the scientific world what pro-
cesses he employed. Ii he would give his
methods as explicitly as DR.. Brown-Sequard
gave his for the ellxir,of life | would be very
glad to make experiments for the Examiner.
All l can say is that l have discovered that
good many people have no souls, and l
don't know where it is located in those that
have"
DR.. A. A. dAncona said: "The nervous
system of all vertebrated animals consists
Of double chain of nervous centers The
two so-called hemispheres of the brain, had
they no means of INSTRUMENTATION
would be independent laboratories of
thought. The corpus callosum, far from
having the exalted office of being the place
of residence of the soul, performs the very
humble Office of messenger from one hemis-
phere to the other. BY means of this con-
Meeting link the action of the two hemls-
pheres is harmonized. otherwise they would
be as various in their activities as are the
two eyes OF a. fish, each of which receives
totally different impressions. Science may
be proud of its achievements, but its vanity
is not so great that it does not frankly con-
fess that its domain is bounded by the
purely physical, and that the spiritual
realm is to it an undiscovered and undis-
coverable world.n
DR.. A. F. Sawyer seemed to be immensely
amused at the idea, and when asked to state
his views, said: "Some years ago, while on
an ocean voyage, one of my fellow passen-
gers, a clergyman, asked me where
thought the soul was located. told him
that | thought that the stomach is the seat
of the soul. When he further asked my
AodoOuo LUZ ouU5T tuIS Fl6W l. scLQs
Because as long as the stomach is kept at
work body and soul are kept together The
ancients located the soul in a little sac con-
tanning calcareous grit or sand, in the an
terror part of the brain, called the pineal
gland. l suppose that part of their belief
was that the more sand a man had the
more soul he had
There is a certain power which presides
over all portions of the human body,
organic and inorganic, called life. 1t is
impossible for a physician to conceive of a
portion being destroyed without destroying
the whole. What is called mind is the
result of the activities of the brain, just as
what is called life is the result Of the activi-
tles OF all the organs of the body. | have
a skull of man who was shot, which was
entered by bullet that shattered the very
portion of the brain in which DIR. Stevens
locates the soul. Yet this man survived
eleven years. And there is another case
where man sustained similar injuries and
survived twenty years. All this talk about
soul is simply bandying Of words, an
attempt at verbal gymnastics, and means
no more than did Emerson's definition of
eternity, when he said that eternity is a
circle whose circumference Is everywhere
ana whose center is nowhere"
=, DR.. W. E. Taylor said: " don't think
tnere IS anything in it at all. In the first
place, we don't know whether there is such