Phrenology Examined

by P. Flourens

NOTE I.

Anatomical Relations supposed by Gall to exist between the Organs of the External Senses, and the Organs of the Intellectual Faculties.

[Page 82.] According to Gall, the origin, the development, the structure and mode of termination, as to the organs of the faculties of the soul and the organs of the external senses, every thing is similar, every thing is in common.

It is known that two substances compose the nervous system—the gray matter, and the white or fibrous matter. Well, according to Gall, one of these substances produces the other. The gray matter produces the white matter.

Wherever, therefore, there happens to be any gray matter, white matter must appear; that is to say, nervous fibres,[184] nervous filaments, nerves. All the nerves in the body must arise in this way. The spinal nerves arise from the gray matter which is in the interior of the spinal marrow; the cerebral nerves from the gray matter that is in the interior of the medulla oblongata.

Hence, the nerves of the body are organs of the senses.

On the other hand, the brain and the cerebellum,[185] which are the organs of the faculties of the soul, must arise like the nerves: the brain from the gray matter of the pyramidal eminences; the cerebellum from the gray matter that surrounds the restiform bodies.

In the second place, whenever a nerve traverses a mass of gray matter, it receives from it, according to Gall, certain new nervous filaments; and in this way it grows and developes itself. The cerebrum and cerebellum will not fail therefore to grow and be developed likewise. The primitive bundles of the cerebellum, (the restiform bodies,) will grow by means of the filaments which will be imparted to them by the gray matter of the ciliary body: the primitive bundles of the cerebrum, (the pyramidal eminences,) by the filaments imparted to them by, first, the gray matter of the pons varolii; secondly, by that of the optic strata; and then by that of the olivary bodies, corpora striata, &c. &c.

Finally, in the same manner as a nerve of sense expands at its termination, and by means of such expansion forms the organ of the sense, so the primitive bundles of fibres of the brain and of the cerebellum terminate in expansions, and constitute the organs of the internal senses; that is to say, the lobes of the cerebellum and the hemispheres of the brain.[186]