I have attempted in the following table to reduce to some common standard such imperfect glimpses as are recoverable of the cranial capacity of some distinguished men, of whose actual brain-weights no record exists:—
TABLE III
CRANIAL CAPACITY OF DISTINGUISHED MEN
| Length. | Breadth. | Circumference. | Estimated | |
| Brain-Weight. | ||||
| Dante | — | — | — | 51.3 |
| Robert the Bruce | 7.70 | 6.25 | 22.25 | — |
| Burns | 8.00 | 5.95 | 22.25 | — |
| Scott (head) | 9.00 | 6.40 | 23.10 | — |
| Heinse | — | 5.30 | — | 48.0 |
| Bünger | — | 5.00 | — | 49.8 |
| Ugo Foscolo | 6.90 | 5.70 | 20.50 | 48.4 |
Some of the examples adduced in the above table appear to exhibit instances of mental endowment of high character, without the corresponding degree of cranial, and consequently cerebral development. The following table exhibits recorded examples of a series of actual brain-weights of distinguished men. It seems to lend confirmation to the idea that great manifestation of mental endowment is correlated, in the majority of observed cases, to a brain above the normal average in mass or weight. But even here intellect and brain-weight are not strictly in uniform ratio. Several of the following brain-weights, including that of Tiedemann, are furnished by Wagner, in the Vorstudien des Menschlichen Gehirns; but in an elaborate table of brain-weights given in the Morphologie und physiologie des Menschlichen gehirns als Seelenorgan, the brain of Byron is classed above all except Cuvier; while Vogt gives the same place, by estimate, to Schiller’s, as next in rank to that of the great naturalist among highly developed brains. Dr. Thurnam states his authorities for others, when producing them in his valuable contribution to the Journal of Mental Science “On the Weight of the Brain.” For that of Webster he refers to “the unsatisfactory article on the brain of Daniel Webster, Edin. Med. Surg. Journ., vol. lxxix. p. 355.” Dr. J. C. Nott, in his “Comparative Anatomy of Races” (Types of Mankind, p. 453), says: “Dr. Wyman, in his post-mortem examination of the famed Daniel Webster, found the internal capacity of the cranium to be 122 cubic inches, and in a private letter to me, he says: ‘The circumference was measured outside of the integuments before the scalp was removed, and may, perhaps, as there was much emaciation, be a little less than in health.’ It was 23¾ inches in circumference; and the Doctor states that it is well known there are several heads in Boston larger than Webster’s. I have myself, in the last few weeks, measured half a dozen heads as large and larger.” The circumference, it will be seen, exceeds the corresponding measurement of Scott’s head, taken under similar circumstances. But the statement of 122 cubic inches as the internal capacity of Webster’s skull seems open to question. If correct, instead of 53.5 oz. of brain-weight as stated in the following table, it is the equivalent of a brain-weight of fully 65 oz., or one in excess even of that, of Cuvier. The brain-weights of Goodsir, Simpson, and Agassiz, are given in the following table from the reported autopsy in each case:—
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:—