ON THE BRAIN OF LAURA BRIDGMAN. By H. H. Donaldson.
A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF REFLEX ACTION (II). By C. F. Hodge.
ON A CURIOUS VISUAL PHENOMENON. By Joseph Le Conte.
A COUNTING ATTACHMENT FOR THE PENDULUM CHRONOSCOPE. By William
Noyes.
PSYCHOLOGICAL LITERATURE. The Nervous System—by H. H.
Donaldson; Experimental Psychology; Criminology—by Arthur
MacDonald; Psychiatry—by William Noyes; Miscellaneous.
The full title of Dr. Donaldson's elaborate article is Anatomical Observations on the Brain and Several Sense-Organs of the blind Deaf-Mute, Laura Dewey Bridgman. The object had in view in the examination of the brain was "to determine, if possible, whether the peculiar mental existence of Laura Bridgman, which was the result of her defective sense-organs, has left any trace on her brain, or whether such anomalies as may be observed are sufficiently explained when considered as the direct consequences of the initial defect alone." The article is therefore "a special study in the general field of the inter-relation of brain-structure and intelligence." The final results are reserved for a second article, but it appears from the present one that the total area of Laura's brain is somewhat small for its weight, and that it is slightly inferior to two other female brains with which comparison was made, the inferiority depending mainly on the smaller average depth of the sulci, that of the left side being the most manifest. The difference can be explained in part at best, by the failure of certain portions of the brain to develop completely. Dr. Donaldson's article is illustrated by very carefully prepared plates.
In the present part of his sketch of the history of reflex action, Dr. Hodge treats of the law demonstrated by Bell, that the posterior roots of the spinal nerves are sensory, the anterior motor, which forms the beginning of the modern history of the nervous system, and of "the physical versus the psychic theory of reflex action." The mechanical theory of reflex action was first elaborated by Marshall Hall. It was opposed by Volkmann and others, among them Pflügel and Auerbach. On the other hand, Lotze supported the former view, but he advanced "a step beyond the comparatively crude, simple mechanism of Marshall Hall to a mechanism of the utmost delicacy, a mechanism susceptible of the nicest adjustments, capable of education, and of prolonged, independent, and complex activity." Habit is only another name for mechanism.
Under the head of Psychiatry, Dr. William Noyes gives an elaborate sketch of the life of Jean Jacques Rousseau bearing on the question of his insanity, which is exciting considerable interest at the present time. (E. C. Sanford, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.)
MIND. October, 1890. No. LX.