unreflective youth are easily compressed into the form of the established mould, and from that deformed condition they seldom or never entirely recover true symmetry. Never taught to reason deeply or accurately, they yield to the sympathetic mesmeric control of social opinions and impulses, without looking to their origin. Hence the lamentable fact that in matters of opinion or philosophy, as in social amusements and fashions, the animal instinct of gregariousness rules, and men move in masses like herds of sheep or buffaloes. 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 pseudo

science, have thus sunk because they have abandoned the methods of science to adopt the methods of ignorant partisanship. They have not studied the comparative development of the brain in connection with character, and therefore they know little or nothing of it. They are not competent as observers of development, because they have never attempted to become acquainted with it. Even so eminent a writer as the late Prof. W. B. Carpenter shows by his writings, which are a monument of laborious erudition, that he did not understand so simple a matter as the external form of the cranium belonging to the development of the cerebellum.

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

ascribed to the entire cerebellum the sexual function alone, in doing which he disregarded the facts developed by vivisection. Ample observation has shown his error. The cerebellum is the physiological as the cerebrum is the psychic brain, and a defined central portion of the cerebellum at the median line does exercise, in connection with the summit of the spinal cord, the sexual functions. This has been fully established by pathology, as well as by my own experiments. In this matter Gall is certainly entitled to the credit of approximating the truth, the function being located within the territory assigned it.

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

tacitly recognize it, for none could so stultify themselves as to assume the brain to be a homogeneous unit in either structure or functions, while seeking to discover the peculiar functions of each part. Thus his fundamental ideas are adopted by his opponents, and step by step they will be compelled to admit his general correctness, and his grand services as the pioneer in the highest department of science, the most prolific in important results to mankind. "Every honest and erudite anatomist," says Sir Samuel Solly in his standard work on the anatomy of the brain, "must acknowledge that we are indebted mainly to Gall and Spurzheim for the improvements which have been made in our mode of studying the brain. For my own part, I most cheerfully acknowledge that the interest which I derived from the lectures of Dr. Spurzheim at St. Thomas' Hospital about the years 1822 and 1823, has been the inciting cause of all the labor which for above twenty years I have at intervals devoted to this subject."

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 socalled "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 consider

able, and sometimes even the inferior part of the temples is projecting, which attests a great development of the adjacent cerebral parts.

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 observa