Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 / Volume 1, Number 9

by Unknown

In speaking of the great void left by the decease of Gall and Spurzheim, I do not forget that for a few years George Combe, Dr. Elliotson, and Dr. Macartney, of England, and Dr. Caldwell, of America, survived, but these eminent gentlemen were not so identified with the science, or so competent to sustain it as to wear the mantle of its founders. My own labors beginning after the death of the founders were those of investigation and discovery, and never to any great extent those of propagation. Indeed, for twenty years I entirely abandoned the scientific rostrum, and almost ended my labors, feeling that my duty had been done in the way of development and demonstration. But in accordance with the great law of periodicity, I resumed my labors in 1877-78.

When we look at the doctrines of Gall and Spurzheim in the light of positive science and philosophy, our first observation is that they fell very far short of revealing the entire functions of the brain, and discovering in it all the important spiritual and physical faculties and energies of life. They did not attempt to explore the brain as a physiological organ, and determine how or in what special organs it controls the physiological functions. These may be regarded as one half, though the lower half, of its capacities, out of which arises a vast amount of medical philosophy.

As to the psychic half of the cerebral functions, they omitted entirely that portion which relates to pneumatology. They thought nothing of the soul as an object of science, and made no attempt to trace its connection with the brain, and the vast number of phenomena which lie along the border line between the physical and spiritual, and which are conspicuous in the phenomena of somnambulism, sleep, dreaming, hypnotism, spiritualism, clairvoyance, trance, ecstasy, and religious marvels.

Overlooking these things, they sought the seats of from twenty-seven faculties (as with Gall) to thirty-five (as with Spurzheim), and did not appear to realize how many had been entirely omitted. When all they attempted to locate are located by positive experiment and assigned their proper localities and limits, we find fully one half of the cerebral surface vacant for organs of other functions. Indeed, the first large publication of Gall and Spurzheim, in four volumes folio, with an atlas of 100 plates, begun in 1809 and finished in 1819, did not in the cranial map of organs profess to be a complete development of the functions of the brain. It located organs, but did not determine the functions intermediate between their boundaries. This was the map of Gall. In that of Spurzheim the intermediate spaces were occupied and the entire exterior surface of the brain devoted to organology, yet still the basilar and interior surface of the brain remained unknown to Spurzheim, and the exterior regions which he supposed entirely occupied by his organs were but half occupied by them. Thus when we consider the unexplored basilar and interior regions, and that half of its exterior surface which was erroneously appropriated to the thirty-five organs, as well as the erroneous location of several, we perceive that more than half of the organs and functions of the brain remained for investigation.

Turning away from the anatomy to contemplate the psychology, we perceive that more than half of human nature had been omitted from the German scheme,—that half of the mental functions which belongs to the organs of the vacant spaces on the corrected map, and in addition to these the higher psychic functions, and the lower physiological functions, neither of which Gall and Spurzheim explored, because they did not attempt to study the brain as a physiological organ, and they did not bring the soul and the higher functions of the mind within the scope of their science.

Gall was a bold, original naturalist and anatomist but not a psychologist; and the incorrectness of his psychology hindered his investigations, and prevented him from carrying out a proper subdivision of faculties and organs. He says in the last volume: “Each fundamental power, essentially distinct, includes sensation, perception, memory and recollection, judgment and imagination,”—disregarding the truth that these are distinct intellectual powers, belonging to different organs, and therefore bearing no proportion to each other. One may have an immense memory without imagination, or a brilliant imagination without much memory. These, and many other psychological errors, are apparent in the writings of Gall, and still more in those of Spurzheim.

In the drawing herewith presented, the thirty-five organs of Spurzheim are assigned their proper locations and dimensions. The first organ, Amativeness (made second by Spurzheim), was assumed to occupy the entire cerebellum. It really occupies only its median and superior portion, and a small section of the anterior surface of the spinal cord, adjacent to the encephalon. This error of Gall and Spurzheim did a great deal to discredit their system. It manifested on their part a fallibility of judgment, and a dogmatic adherence to first impressions in the face of evidence to the contrary; for the experiments of Rolando and Flourens demonstrated a connection between the cerebellum and the general vital force and muscular action. The relation may not have been clearly understood, but the facts were decisive, and the researches of Majendie, with the more recent ones of Ferrier, have made more clear the relations of the cerebellum to the muscular system and vital force.

The doctrine of Gall has been abandoned by physiologists because refuted by many facts, the most decisive of which is that the cerebellum of castrated horses is larger than that of stallions, which could not be possible if the cerebellum had only sexual functions. Moreover, the doctrine of Gall was essentially unreasonable in itself. To suppose that so large a portion of the brain which is continually active, being well supplied with blood, could have a function which is but occasionally active, and which, through the greater part of human life, is unnoticed or inactive, is extremely unreasonable; and to suppose that the serious disturbances of animal life and muscular motion, caused by ablations of the cerebellum, were due to the disturbance of an organ having only sexual functions, was thoroughly absurd. The parrot-like repetition of these exploded errors by the followers of the phrenological system contributed to its discredit in the medical profession.

The 2d organ of Gall (3d of Spurzheim), Philoprogenitiveness, was regarded as one of the best known phrenological organs, but my unprejudiced study of heads soon assured me of its inaccuracy. The organ was small in Spurzheim, who was remarkably fond of children, and I have found it small in ladies who showed no lack of parental love, but generally well developed and active in criminal skulls. One which I obtained in Arkansas, of a man named Richmond, had this region large and active, although he was the one of a group of murderers by whom the children, or, rather, boys, were killed. This region is extremely defective in the brains of birds, which are certainly very devoted to their young. The attachment to children belongs really to an interior region of the occiput, where the occipital lobes face the median line. Hence it is that a large occipital development very often coincides with the love of children; but the true position of the organ renders it difficult to determine its development in life.