TABLE IV

BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF DISTINGUISHED MEN


			Age.	Oz.	Grms.


1	Cuvier	Naturalist	63	64.5	1830
2	Byron	Poet	36	63.5?	1799
3	Abercrombie	Philosopher, Physician	64	63.	1785
4	Schiller	Poet	46	63.?	1785
5	Goodsir	Anatomist	53	57.55	1629
6	George Brown	Statesman (Canadian)	61	56.3	1595
7	Harrison	Chief Justice	45	56.	1586
8	Spurzheim	Phrenologist, Physician	56	55.06	1575
9	Simpson	Physician, Archæologist	59	54.	1530
10	Dirichlet	Mathematician	54	53.6	1520
11	De Morny	Statesman	50	53.6	1520
12	Napoleon I.	General, Statesman	52	53.5	1516
13	Daniel Webster	Statesman	70	53.5	1516
14	Campbell	Lord Chancellor	80	53.5	1516
15	Agassiz	Naturalist	66	53.4	1512
16	Chalmers	Author, Preacher	67	53.	1502
17	Fuchs	Pathologist	52	52.9	1499
18	De Morgan	Mathematician	73	52.7	1493
19	Gauss	Mathematician	78	52.6	1492
20	Broca	Anthropologist	—	52.5	1488
21	Dupuytren	Surgeon	58	50.7	1436
22	Grote	Historian	76	49.75	1410
23	Whewell	Philosopher	71	49.	1390
24	Hermann	Philologist	51	47.9	1358
25	Tiedemann	Physiologist	80	44.2	1254
26	Hausmann	Mineralogist	77	43.2	1226

Dr. Thurnam, in producing fifteen of the above examples, remarks: “Altogether, they decidedly confirm the generally received view of the connection between size of brain and mental power and intelligence”; and he adds his conviction that if the examination of the brain in the upper ranks of society, and in men whose mental endowments are well known, were more generally available, further confirmation would be given to this conclusion. The converse, at least, is certain, that no great intelligence or unwonted mental power is possible with a brain much below the average in mass and weight But while the above list exhibits a series of exceptionally high brain-weights of distinguished men, the relative weights in some cases—as in Napoleon—are calculated to excite surprise if viewed as an index of comparative intellectual capacity. On the other hand, those lowest in the scale, and below the mean weight, include men of undoubted eminence in letters and science; while the proofs are no less unquestionable that a large healthy brain is not invariably the organ of unwonted intelligence or mental activity.

In the Philosophical Transactions of 1861, Dr. Boyd published an elaborate series of researches illustrative of the weight of various organs of the human body, including the weights of two thousand brains. Most of the healthy brains are those of patients in the St. Marylebone Infirmary, and have already been referred to as necessarily representing the indigent and uneducated classes of London. Here, therefore, if an unusually large brain is the index of intellectual power, every probability was against the occurrence of brains above the average size or weight. But the results by no means confirm this assumption. Among the patients in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, in like manner, though including the better class of artizans and others from country districts, we might still look for a confirmation of M. Broca’s assumption, based on extensive observations of French crania, “that, other things being equal, whether as the result of education, or by hereditary transmission, the volume of the skull, and consequently of the brain, is greater in the higher than in the lower classes.” But Dr. Peacock’s tables include four brain-weights, three of them of a sailor, a printer, and a tailor, respectively, ranging from 61 to 62.75 oz.; and so surpassing all but two, or at the most three, of the heaviest ascertained brain-weights of distinguished men. Tried by the posthumous test of internal capacity, three skulls of nameless Frenchmen, derived from the common cemeteries of Paris, in like manner showed brains equalling in size that of Cuvier. The following are the maximum brain-weights among the St. Marylebone patients apparently unaffected by cerebral disease:—