The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1899-01-19
INDICATIONS OF INTELLECT.
They Are Not 10 Be Found In The Weight
or ConvolutIons Of The Brain.
Or. AUSTIN FLINrS ESTIMATES.
He Finds That the Average Brain Weight For Men
Is 502 Ounces Some Foreign mesil-
gators Give higher figures.

The fact has been pretty well established
that an important relation exists between
a mans brain and the quality and guam
tity of his mental work. But IL looks very
much ns IL "A number of erroneous theories
had been curreDt i'm regard To the purely
physical evidyfce of ones intellectual ca
pacity. In The Popular Science Monthly
DIR. Joseph Simms discrcdits several such
notions.
Probably the most prevalent of these de-
lusions is the belief that ability and force
cf character are proportional to weight of
brain matter On this point DIR. Simms
has collected n great deal of interesting
data. The heaviest brain belonging to "a
talented person of which he has been able
to obtain any definite information Is that
of the novelist Turgeneif. This weighed
II ounces at the time of his death. The
Scottish physician Abercrombie had 63
ounces of brain. the Scottish General Aber-
cromby 62 and General B. L. Butler the
same Another group of nine eminent
men, including Thackcray Cuvier and
the infamous jeffreys, had brains weighing
between "a end 5S. q ounces The author
of "vanity Fair, !" then, was blessed with
il ounces less than the man who wrote
s'Dinitri Roudne." The first Napoleon,
Daniel Webster, Agassiz and Chalmers arc
among 81 famous persons whose brains
weighed from 30 To 5S.6 ounces. 1t is in
structive 10 compare the endowments OF
the hero OF Jena and AusterlitZ with those
of the leader of the expedition against Fort
Fisher and then 10 recall that the latter
had about ten ounces more pulp inside his
craniu,0 than the greatest general of mod
crn times.
In another group of 25 men having from
40 to 4e.9 ounces of brain one finds Grote,
Babbage, Bertillon, Liebig, Bishop (tho
mind rcader) and Gambetta. The figures
given for the last named are 400. Now,
the average weight of the brains of several
hundred boys between the ages Of and IA
was found by DIR. Boyd To be 45.9 ounces,
and for boys ranging from 10 years
4O.2. Gambetta stecred the French repub-
lie through one of its most dangerous
crises. His death was pronounced tho
sudden extinction Of powerful individual
force, one of the most powerful indeed OF
such forces hitherto operating In Europe.
Yet in the scales his brain counted for less
than that of the average boy of Z!
The impossibility Of estimating the
quality Of n mans mind from the weight
" the organ in which il resides is further
illustrated by the following statements:
An idiot boy of IL, who nearly killed his
sister, had brain weighing 51.5 ounces.
Another idiot, who was older, possessed
SOL ounces, an amount cqualed by only
Ave of the famous men In DIR. Simms' list,
and yet exceeded by at least IL persons
who were distinctivcly idiotic. DR. Ireland
cites an imbecile, for instance, with 7O.5
ounces Of brain, and there Is record of
an illiterate and weak minded man with
7i.8 ounces. The Army Medical museum
in Washington contains the brain of
slwarfed Indian squaw which weighed
1916 ounces. and even these figures are eX-
ceeded i'm tho case cited by Bischoff OF an
ignorant workman. Russian, who is credit
cd with 1873 ounces.
DR.. Austin Flint Of New York in his
Physiology" makes the average brain
weight for men so 2 ounces. Foreign au-
thorities give other figures, and these are
higher than Dr. Flint's in most cases.
DR. Simms strikes an average and adopts
52. 2 as a standard. The mean for bis 60
famous men is only 5l.3 ounces, making
them, on the whole. below the average of
ordinary men in the quantity OF their
brains. But the mean for DIR. Simms'
~
The folly Of attempting TO judge Of n
man by his cranial bumps" was exposed
many years ago by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
He made the professor at the breakfast Ia.
BILE say: ''The walls of the head are double,
with great chamber of air between them,
over the smallest and most crowded or
gsns. Can you tell me how much money
there il in the safe, which also has thick
walls, by kncading the knobs with your
Angersg So, when man fumblcs about
my forehead and talks about the organs o
individuality and size, trust him as mucl
a should II he felt over the outside o
my strong box and told me that there wa
= e5 or $40 bill under this or that rivct
Perhaps there Is, only he doesn't know
anything about IL. "
Not only is IL impossible to judge Of tn
brain by external appearance and bulk
but even when the size of the cavity within
nffords little clew To- the amount of mat
ter therein. Except In raN eases OF dis
ensc, saws DIR. Simms, the brain docs no
fit the skull. II il surrounded by thre
membranes and watery fluid.
II the weight of man. : brain indicate
anything at all, II Is more likely to tell hi
nationality and birthplace than how eifte
Ne ia 1t has been Dotcd In tables of brai
weights that cold northern countries pro
duce bigger brains than warm, tropics
ones do nhe largest average is attaino
In Scotland
Another popular error Is the suppositio
that larrc conyolutiors and deep and ,o
tuous pcssavcs between the subdivision
Of = brair bc,ray superior power Ccrtai
rodents. lil.e the hca CT, evincc n high o
der Of int ironce and engineering skill
ard vet fiic.r irlins rp devoid OF convol'
fino< ApGln. the whale has n larg
br.i.l. wi1iIh .tv -r'ividri by q go fssurc
hnf the crcaigres rrntA p1Ttf Is inst
n,1canf COMP 81 Wi'h mahe Even q
citt hart iIt, art o. lt is. cannot
tnaLed o't.rf an ana yci IT. hnlin
,..r ffan human mnIn ans q
- ar M fh more u1mnllcatsl
- -. a.. x<.r rul afse IN tho fnaffua