THEIR PAST AND PRESENT STATUS. Science ought to emancipate mankind from the control of the animal instincts, and in the purely physical and mathematical sciences it does. In mathematics, dynamics, optics, acoustics, astronomy, electricity, engineering, and mechanics, the dictates of pure intellect are seldom interfered with by any blind impulse, attraction, or prejudice. But it is very different in the realm of opinion—in matters in which reason should be supreme, with as absolute authority as number and form have in mathematics. A thousand can measure and calculate, and can obey implicitly in thought the mathematical laws, for one that can reason and obey implicitly the dictates of pure reason. If an error is made in the construction of a bridge, erection of a house, or financial report of a bank, thousands may at once detect the error, and by clear exposition compel its recognition. But in matters of opinion controlled by reason, there is no such ready detection and recognition of error, even by the best educated classes. The realm of opinion is ever in chaos. Contradictory opinions are ever clashing; no supreme arbiter is known; no law of reason, like the laws of mathematics, comes in to dissipate error and delusion. Why is this? Anthropology replies that reason is as positive, clear, and imperative as mathematical principles, but that men have not been educated to exercise and to obey the faculty of reason, as they have been to measure and to count. In matters of opinion, feeling and impulse are allowed to dominate over reason, and to hug the delusions which reason would dispel. We have no educational system, no college, in which the art of reasoning is properly taught, although the shallow pedantry of Aristotelian logic has assumed to teach the art of reasoning. The faculties themselves of our colleges do not understand or practice the true art of reasoning, for if they did, they would harmonize in opinion as mathematicians harmonize in calculations, and would lead the onward march of mind continually, making or accepting discoveries of the highest importance, instead of standing, as they do, impregnable castles of ancient error in matters of opinion, though moderately progressive in physical science. It is for these reasons that popular opinions and opinions of universities are of little value. Everything else but reason dominates them. The gift of a founder, the decree of a king, parliament, or pope, the decision of some ancient conclave of the superstitious and ignorant, or the imperious will of some interested body of lords, plutocrats, monks, or political usurpers, establishes the mould in which opinions are cast; and the soft brains of inexperienced and These considerations prepare us to appreciate justly the value of former and contemporary opinions in reference to the science of the brain. The mystery that surrounded its anatomy was dispelled by Dr. Gall, and modern scientists have been building upon the foundation laid by him. It is not necessary now to dwell upon his protracted and careful study of the comparative development of the brain in men and animals. Suffice it to say no naturalist was ever more diligent, fearless, and successful, in the study of nature; and the conclusive evidence of his success is the fact that no student of nature who travelled after his footsteps has failed to see what he saw, and recognize Gall as a grand, original teacher. Why is it, then, that the reputation of Gall and his discoveries of mental organs in the brain has been so fluctuating? Why have the discoveries that came forward with so imposing a prestige at the beginning of this century so entirely lost that prestige in the colleges in sixty years, that the writings of Gall and his disciples are generally neglected? Vague, unscientific speculations have taken their place; the colleges and literati are groping in darkness, and, like plants in a cellar which reach out to the dim windows, they look anxiously for the information that may come from laboratories and anatomical halls, where animals by thousands are tortured to find the sources of physical functions, forgetful of the fact that the human brain is a psychic organ, and that a whole century of such investigations would leave the grand problems of conscious life and character in primeval darkness! Have they no respect for the labors and honorable observations of clear-headed scientists fifty to eighty years ago? Were the anatomists Reil and Loder deceived when they testified to Gall’s wonderful discoveries in anatomy? Were Andral, Broussais, Corvsart, and others, who stood at the head of the medical profession in France, deceived when they were followers of Gall? Was Dr. Vimont deceived when the study of the animal kingdom converted him from an opponent to a supporter of Gall? Were Elliotson and Solly of London, the Combes of Scotland, Macartney of Ireland, and a full score of others in the highest ranks of medical science deceived in giving their testimony that the anatomy of the brain, its development in the healthy, its amply recorded pathology, revealed in hospitals, and its phenomena in the insane asylums and prisons, supported the doctrines of Gall? They were not deceived, and they were not blind. They were observers. Their successors, sinking into the agnosticism of pseudoscience, Cranioscopy, the study of the brain and its proportional development through the cranium, which is the method by which Gall made his discoveries, is a lost art in the medical profession, and I doubt if there is a single professor in any American or European medical college to-day, who has a competent knowledge of it. The art of cranioscopy requires as its basis a correct knowledge of the anatomy of the brain and skull, a correct knowledge of the localities of all the cerebral organs, and a practical skill in determining their development with accuracy. A variation of one eighth of an inch in development will change the destiny of the individual, and incorrect conceptions of the growth of the brain and the natural irregularities of the cranium would vitiate the conclusions of the observers. A somewhat famous but unscientific practitioner of phrenology gave a good illustration of this by mistaking a rugged development of the lambdoid suture for an enormous organ of combativeness, and ascribing to the gentleman a terrific, pugnacious energy which was the very opposite of his true character. The sciolism of popular phrenology, scantily supplied with anatomical knowledge, and but little better supplied with clear psychic conceptions, is incapable of commending the science to the esteem of critical observers, and of course incapable of sustaining its reputation against the overwhelming opposition of medical colleges. Thus rejected or at least neglected in the universities, which supply its place with worthless metaphysics, and unsustained before the public,—for the tone of literature is controlled by the universities,—it is not strange that the grand discoveries of Gall are neglected as they are to-day. The objections to Gall’s discoveries which have been considered sufficient, have generally been the offspring of ignorance and superficial thinking. Thousands of physicians have been misled by professors of anatomy thoroughly ignorant of the subject, who have shown to their own ignorant satisfaction how impossible it was to judge of the development of the brain through the skull. The attacks upon phrenology have been generally remarkable for their logical feebleness. Any one well acquainted with the science and the phenomena in nature, could have made a much more effective attack,—an attack which would have appeared entirely unanswerable; but no such attack has been made. There has been, however, one valid objection to the discoveries of Gall, which has done much to discredit the whole system. He The fundamental doctrine, however, which Gall has the immortal honor of establishing, is that the cerebrum is not a homogeneous unitary organ, but a mass of distinct organs, as distinct as the sensitive and motor columns of the spinal cord, and exercising different mental functions. Whatever errors of detail he may have fallen into cannot obscure the glory of the pioneer in the anatomy and psychology of the brain. His anatomical doctrines have stood the test of time; they are established; and his psychic doctrines are as near an approach to absolute truth as ever was made by a pioneer in a wilderness of mystery. Gall himself, with the just self-respect which belongs to a sincere and fearless seeker of scientific truth, expressed his attitude as follows, at the close of the sixth volume of his works:— “These views of the qualities and faculties of man are not the fruit of subtile reasonings. They bear not the impress of the age in which they originate, and will not wear out with it. They are the result of numberless observations, and will be immutable and eternal like the facts that have been observed, and the fundamental powers which those facts force us to admit. They are not only founded on principles deduced from individual facts, but are confirmed by each individual fact in particular, and will forever come off triumphant from every test to which they may be submitted, whether of analysis or synthesis. If the reasonings of metaphysicians are ever discarded, this philosophy of the human qualities and faculties will be the foundation of all philosophy in time to come.” These are the words of a grand-souled philosopher, who knew that he was speaking the truth, and forcing, as if at the point of the bayonet, a great, new truth upon the stolidity of the colleges. The simple truth of fibrous structure in the brain, now known to every tyro in anatomy, was contested in the days of Gall and Spurzheim, and had to be enforced by public dissection in an Edinburgh amphitheatre. With the same unreasoning stolidity the doctrine of the multiplicity of organs in the brain was shunned, evaded, or denied, though it would seem idiotic for any physiologist to assume such a position (by suppressing his own common sense) when the aim of all modern investigations of the brain is to discover different functions in different parts. The great doctrine of the multiplicity of cerebral organs, introduced by Gall, could not be suppressed or ignored among those who investigate the brain in any manner. All modern investigators The organ of language, his first discovery, located at the junction of the front and middle lobes, has been the first to receive the general recognition of the medical profession, because it is easy to recognize its failures in disease, and the morbid condition of its organ. Its general recognition by physiologists now is not usually accompanied by any reference to Gall as its discoverer. They are probably not aware that he located it correctly, because he referred so much to its external sign in the prominence of the eyes. This prominence of the eyes indicates development of the brain at the back of their sockets. The external marking of organs is to indicate where they lie and in what direction their development produces exterior projection. The junction of the front and middle lobes, including the so-called “island of Reil” (who was a pupil of Gall, and spoke of him as the most wonderful of anatomists), has its most direct external indication at the outer angle of the eye. That is the location which has been given the organ by my experiments, which were made without reference to anatomy, without even a thought of it, for I consider such experiments the supreme authority in physiology, and do not stop to inquire whether any previous knowledge supports them or not. Dr. Gall had the true idea, for although he spoke of the general prominence of the eye as the indication, he also recognized the development as extending in the direction in which I have located it. He regarded the organ of language as a convolution lying on the super-orbital plate, behind the position of the eyeball. This convolution is comparatively defective in animals generally, but more developed in birds of superior vocal powers. In addition to this, he observed the growth extending into the temples, where the front and middle lobes unite. “A great diameter in this direction,” he says, “is always a favorable augury for the memory of words. I have seen persons who with an ordinary conformation of the eyes yet learned by heart with great facility. But in these cases the diameter from one temple to the other is ordinarily very considerable, Thus it is evident that he recognized the structure behind the external angle of the eye as an important part of the organ of language. The interior portion of the convolution is the more intellectual portion of the organ, while the exterior portion is that which holds the closest relation to the fibres of the corpora striata in the middle lobe, and may therefore most properly be called the organ of language or of speech, the impairment of which produces aphasia, or loss of speech. This is the form which has chiefly attracted the attention of the medical profession, as it very often accompanies paralytic affections from disease of the corpora striata. Evidently Gall arrived at the correct location, and he illustrates the discovery by referring to a great number of authors and scientists whose development he observed. His most decisive fact is the case of a patient who lost the memory of names entirely, but not the power of speech, by a thrust from a foil, which penetrated through the face, the posterior inner part of the front lobe, at its junction with the middle lobe, thus wounding the internal part of the organ of language, but not reaching the outer posterior part, at the island of Reil, to which pathologists have given their chief attention. Evidently Gall had the correct idea, and should have been duly credited by the pathologists who have verified his discovery. In verifying this discovery by excitement of the organs, I find the centre of language behind the external angle of the eye, on each side of which, toward the nose and toward the temples, are analogous functions which might, if we did not analyze closely, be included with it, as portions of the organ of language. The discoveries of Gall, though no longer sustained by colleges or phrenological societies, have never lost their hold upon the students who follow his teachings and study nature. A few phrenological writers and lecturers maintain the interest among those they reach, but our standard literature generally ignores the doctrines, and forgets the name of Gall. Yet the eclipse is not total. It will pass away as this century ends, and the fame of the great pioneer in science will be immortal, for it rests not on any wave of eighteenth century opinion, but is based on that which is “immutable and eternal.” Yet so thoroughly has the present generation of physicians been misled by the colleges into ignorance of the labors of Gall, that although they know the location of the faculty of language is now beyond doubt, they do not think of the discoverer or understand his discoveries, but vaguely suppose that Ferrier, Jackson, Fritsch, Hitzig, and others have entirely superseded Gall by their inferences from experiments on the brains of animals. In this how greatly are they deceived! All that modern vivisectors have done has utterly failed to disturb the cerebral science derived from cranial observation It was once supposed that the intellectual functions of the front lobe were entirely refuted by discoveries which proved the front lobe the source of muscular impulses. More thorough experimenting dissipated this illusion. Ferrier reported that after a partial ablation of the front lobes in intelligent monkeys, “instead of, as before, being actively interested in their surroundings and curiously prying into all that came within the field of their observation, they remained apathetic or dull, or dozed off to sleep, responding only to the sensations or impressions of the moment, or varying their listlessness with restless and purposeless wanderings to and fro. They had lost to all appearance the faculty of attentive and intelligent observation.” This is precisely what the true cerebral psychology indicates. The imaginary muscular powers were not at all detected, for the section of the front lobe had no influence on the muscular system. The science of Gall was a science of facts relevant to great principles. The science of his opponents was a science of irrelevant facts, revealing no philosophy. Students of nature adhered to Gall; students of books and adherents of authority neglected him. Of this there is no better illustration than the great collection of De Ville in London, of which the following account is given in the admirable treatise on phrenology (of 637 pages) by Dr. James P. Browne of Edinburgh. “How wide and various are the channels through which the phrenologist derives his facts. In society, whichever way he turns, they are constantly being presented for his contemplation. Besides there is not a city or town of any note that does not contain a collection of authentic casts of well-known persons; and up to the year 1853, the gallery of Mr. De Ville, in London, contained the largest and most valuable phrenological collection in the world of casts and skulls of men and women remarkable for the greatness of their talents, or the peculiarities of their dispositions; including above three hundred busts, both antique and modern, of the most renowned men the world has ever seen. The whole number amounted at least to three thousand. About two thousand skulls of animals of every denomination were also to be found there. There could be seen the form of head which accompanied the poetical instincts and high moral aspirations of the poor peasant boy, John Clare; and how strikingly dissimilar it was in its most marked characteristics to the head of George Stevenson, one of the most original of mechanical geniuses. Both were self-taught, but one was intensely active, the other cogitative. The mind of Clare was constantly engaged in poetical musings upon the moral affections, their pains and their pleasures; that of Stevenson was drawn by an inherent impulse to physical objects, and perseveringly “Amongst the skulls of birds how readily could the practised observer distinguish the skull of the tuneful, melodious canary from that of the chirping, inharmonious sparrow. Nor could he fail to mark the constant difference between the form of the head of a song thrush and that of the jackdaw; or to discern how the cuckoo’s head is hollow where the organ of the love of offspring is located, whilst the same part presents a striking protuberance in the partridge. In the dolphin, the porpoise, the seal, and many other animals, the male could there be distinguished from the female by the form of the back part of the skull, where the same organ lies. Nor could any one fail to mark the form of head that is the invariable, and evidently indispensable, concomitant of the ferocious and sanguinary temper of the tiger, as well as the strong contrast which it presents to the skull of the wild but gentle gazelle. How superior also the elevated brain of the poodle dog, when compared with that of the indocile, snarling cur! Thus in animals of the same species the most marked disparity of form is easily discernible, on comparing the skulls of such as are docile and gentle, with those of the dull and intractable. The elevation of the one and the depression of the other are obvious. “Perhaps it may not be considered out of place if I relate a circumstance of considerable interest to those who make it a point to make strict inquiry as to the amount of knowledge which certain races are capable of imbibing. “Some twenty years ago and more, when the great anatomist, Tiedemann, was in London, he paid a visit to De Ville’s Phrenological Museum. I saw him as he entered the place. He was erect and tall, with an air somewhat stately, yet perfectly unassuming. His head was not so remarkable for great size as for its fine symmetry, and the organs of the moral and intellectual portions of it were in a rare degree harmoniously blended. It was the characteristic head of a curious, indefatigable, conscientious inquirer into the arcana of physical things—one who was not given to indulge in unprofitable, visionary speculations. His visit to De Ville being strictly private, there was no opportunity afforded me of hearing his remarks. But, afterwards, it was told me by De Ville himself, that Tiedemann supposed (and in this he resembled all other opponents of phrenology) that because he had tested the capacity of a great many negro and European skulls, by filling them with millet seed, and found that, on an an average, those of the Africans were scarcely inferior in size to the skulls of Europeans—that from that fact he thought it probable that the negro, if placed in advantageous circumstances, ought to be capable of exhibiting powers of mind equal to the European. “But when the humble, self-educated follower of Gall demonstrated to this celebrated physiologist and anatomist that the forehead of the negro is usually much smaller than that of the European, and that, moreover, its form, with few exceptions, is irregular and ill-balanced; and when he showed that the size of the negro skull in the basilar portion, where the organs of the affections (which we possess in common with the lower animals) lie, was, in proportion to the upper and anterior parts, which are the seats of the moral and intellectual faculties, larger in the negro than in the European—when De Ville showed, by many instances, that this is always and infallibly “For the long term of twenty-two years the writer of this treatise took every opportunity, afforded him by the kindness of its generous owner, to study the contents of this rare collection; and, after having studied it with assiduous care, he is bound to say that out of the hundred thousand facts which it contained, not one could be pointed out that did not testify to the never-failing agreement of particular parts or organs of the brain, with certain independent, elementary faculties, according to the laws discovered by Gall. “It is with the view of demonstrating the stability and unchangeableness of those laws that the composition of this treatise has been undertaken; in order to excite in its regard such a degree of attention as will tend to awaken it from the state of inauspicious somnolency in which it has for some years lain prostrate. But, strongly impressed with a conviction of the importance of the subject, and fully alive to the difficulty of treating it, the writer cannot help being crossed by fears for the success of this attempt. Relying, however, upon the solidity of the foundation upon which his subject rests, and surveying the vast store of accumulated materials which have, for more than thirty years, been constantly passing through his hands, and the facts which are now strewn before him in whatever society he may be placed, he would fain hope that even his humble abilities will enable him to make such a selection of incontrovertible facts as will place beyond a doubt the possibility of determining the innate talents and dispositions of any one by making a skilful survey of the head; and, should he succeed in merely raising a more general spirit of active inquiry in regard to the nature of the evidence adduced, and the deductions drawn from it by phrenologists, than at present exists, he will have reaped a fair reward for his efforts, for he has long been thoroughly convinced that a strict and faithful examination of the facts which bear upon the case is alone requisite for converting the incredulous scoffer into the zealous advocate.” Having thus vindicated the claims of the great pioneer in philosophy, our next issue will show the limitations of his discoveries, and give an outline of the new and all-comprehensive Anthropology. Therapeutic Sarcognomy.—The publication of this work has been laid aside to introduce the Journal of Man. It will appear during the present year, but not in a cheap abridged form as first proposed. It will be an improved edition. |