El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1899-09-26

gooo mental and physical work at the
same time. Tnis point Is also illus
tcaIed in certain animals. The brain
of The elephant weighs from eight to
ten pounds, yet the elephant Is not
more Intelligent than the dog, whose
head is much smaller. So with the
whale, whose brain weighs five pounds.
In these large animals the whole OF the
brain is required to govern the large
mass of muscle and tissues, and very
little is left for Intellectual purposes.
For this reason men with large bodies
require larger brains than small men,
but it does not follow that the larger
men have more brain to spare for pure
ly mental work: in fact, the opposite
mi bit readily be true.
2 There Is difference in the quail
isy of brains. Not all the brain is
nervous tissue or grey matter. A large
brain may be largely composed of con-
nective tissue aud SO of little use as q
thinking organ. Then again the abill-
sy to see with sharpness and accuracy,
to possess delicacy of touch, taste. and
smell, are all dependent upon the kind
of nerve tissue and not mere quantity.
Brain action will also be modified by
the blood supply, by the relative size
of the great vessels going to the brain,
by the length of the neck, by the dis
lance from the heart to the brain, and
many other factors among which q
good stomach and liver may be not the
least.
3. A large head does not always
even contain . large brain. Anyone
who has examined many skulls will
have been struck by the great differ
ence in their thickness. Some are so
thin IS to be almost transparent, others
are from one-half to one inch in thick
ness, we'll covered with hair. may give
large external measurements, and still
have very small brain inside. The
relation of brain weight to thinking
power ia farther illustrated BY tho fol-
lowing facts:
The heaviest brain on record was
that of London news boy. Its weight
was 80 ounces. A dwarf Indian squaw
had q brain weighing 1876 ounces. The
average weight of the brains of sixty
famous men was 51.3 ounces; that of
ten idiots and five imbeciles that are on
record was SO 2 ounces, a difference of
The brain of Gambetts, tbeO distin-
guished French statesman weighed but
1919 ounces, while the brains OF Huber
the philosopher, Grotius the great
commentator, Liebig the chemist,
Babbage the mathematician and in
ventor oflthe calculating machine, W ere
all below the average in weight. On
the other hand we have Ben Butter
with a brain weighing 81 ounces, DR..
Abercrombie' weighing So ounces,
and Turgenieff, the Russian novelist,
with brain weighing II ounces. But
the newsboy and the dwarf Indian
squaw are still ahead of them oil so far
as M ass of brain ia concerned. Now
what of it all? What conclusion is to
be drawn What relation does brain
weight bear to intellect.
The facts prove no relation whatever.
We simply know that some great men
have had brains weighing more than
number of great men, whose brains
we're weighed, were found to have
smaller brains than the average. We
know further that many ignorant peo-
pie, some very stupid people, and quite
a number of imbeciles have had re-
markedly large brains; we also know
that the great ms jority of idiots have
very small brains. The politicians of
the world may have been large men for
such men readily attract the public
eye, but q census OF the great scholars
of the world, the men of real intellect
and learning, will scarcely show them
to be men with bodies or heads above
the average. In fact upon first seeing
a great scholar we are usually dissp-
pointed in his appearance. Let no
young man be discouraged because .
number seven hat falls over his ears
or because he does not measure six
feet in his stocking feet; he may still
be a Babbage,a Liebig, Grotius or q
Gambetta. M, D.