The Washington times., 1920-05-16

About Your Two Brains.
What, Really, Are Your
! One Brain Thinks.
The Other Rests.
By ARTHUR BklsBANE
Copyright. lsSs.b
This Is about your brain.

uU - ABOUT your DInins
. a rich boy inherits an auto
mobile, orders the chauffeur to
bring II around, takes little in
/. terest in the machinery.
n man who has worked for the
money to buy an automobile tries
70 know about il; II interests him.
We inherit our brains, get them
. ready-made at birth. Few know
mors abeut the wonderful think
ing machine at the end Of life than
1t the beginning.
Whatever of you amounts to
anything is the mysterious power
working through the brain. What
actually does the work, soul, as
some tell you; will as others say;
chemical reaction, as materialists
believe, we cannot know. But we
can know about the machine that
lives in the dark inside the skull,
recsiving information of the out
side world, through one set Of
nerves, and through another set
issuing orders obeyed by muscles
and bones.
Read among many good books
on the subject, brain and Person
atty" by Thompson, who under
stands his subject. 1t is published
by Dodd, Mead and Company.
Men, originally, did not
know that feeling and thinking
dwell in the brain. The word
brain" doesn't occur in the Bible.
When the book was written, it
wasn't suspected that the cold,
gray organ, isolated in the skull,
had anything to do with thought.
Babylonians, and others later,
believed that thought was in the
liver. Their priests carefully ex-
amined, for information about the
future, livers of animals offered
in sacrifice. The Jews believed
that the soul was located in the
heart, the mind in the kidneys
the gentle emotions, compassion,
etc, in the bowels. Therefore the
Bible says, ''his reins kidney in.
struct him in the night seasons"
Elsewhere it is said, "The Lord
trieth the heart and the Kidneys"
and Jeremiah denounced the hypo-
critics who, he said "had the Lord
in their mouths, but not in their
kidneys"
Aristotle decided that the brain
had nothing to do with thought,
that 1t was q refrigerating plant to
cool off the blood. :. :,
One man, Alcmaeon, who lived
before Plato or Aristotle. taught
that the mind was in the brain. He
based his belief on discovery that
total blindness was caused II you
out the optic nerve leading from
the eyes to the brain. Otherwise
/. .ifen secuted the theory until the
great Greek Galen. physician to
I Marcus Aurelius. revived and
Broca, scientist. who died in 1881,
was first to understand the human
thinking machine. The part OF
your brain with which you speak
is called "Broca's convolution."
He located speech in the rear part
of the third frontal convolution;
injury to that part destroys speech
f. absolutely.
When that Frenchman success
fully explored the brain and taught
how it worked he did more import
ant exploring than a thousand
Pearys. Livingstones or stanleys.
As you possess two eyes, two
ears, two hands, and two feet, SO
YOU possess two brains. Each
brain Is complete, separate, and
can, If necessary. do all the work
of thinking, just as one eye, II
necessary. can do the work OF see
ing.
Ii you are right handed. the con-
volution in your left brain does
J, the talking. If you are left hand
ed, it is the right handed convolu-
ton that talks. If the talking part
Of, the brain is destroyed in a
Young child, the other brain can
be taught to talk. In a man Of
fifty injury to "Broca's convolu-
luton" destroys speech for life.
The brain becomes hardened
with age and. like an old dog. can
not be taught new tricks.
We are born with no knowledge
of speech. Each new brain must
be taught everything from the be-
ginning, speech included. Educa-
tion begins when q baby points its
hand and is told the name OF the
thing to which it points. II you
tied the left hand Of child. COM
pelling it to point only with its
right, speech would surely begin
with the left brain. IL you tied
down the right hand and compelled
the child to point with its left it
would be left-handed, and the right
brain alone would learn to speak.
Seeing, hearing, recognizing our
|. friends. tasting, smelling, every
thing that VIC do has its separate
place in the brain, az a book has
it's place on the library shelf. Your
brain can be so damaged as to
\ make it impossible for you to
: ~ncr0pi1o momhora nf vour own