In the full and detailed treatises concerning microcephali by Karl Vogt ("Archiv für Anthropologie," ii, 2, 228) and Von Flesch ("Würzburger Festschrift," ii, 95, 1882) may be found further data in regard to more recent cases.
Many questions of physiological and psychological importance in respect to the capacity of development in cases of imperfectly developed brain are discussed in the "Zeitschrift für das Idioten-Wesen" by W. Schröter (Dresden) and E. Reichelt (Hubertusburg).
But thus far the methods of microscopical investigation of the brain are still so little developed that we can not yet with certainty establish a causal connection, in individual cases, between the deviations of microcephalic brains from the normal brain and the defects of the psychical functions. The number of brains of microcephali that have been examined with reference to this point is very small, although their scientific value, after thorough-going observation of the possessors of them during life, is immense. For microcephalous children of some years of age are a substitute for imaginary, because never practicable, vivisectory experiments, concerning the connection of body and mind.
To conclude these fragments, let me add here some observations concerning a case of rare interest, that of the microcephalous child, Margarethe Becker (born 1869), very well known in Germany. These observations I recorded on the 9th of July, 1877, in Jena, while the child was left free to do what she pleased.
The girl, eight years of age, born, according to the testimony of her father, with the frontal fontanelle (fonticulus anterior) closed and solid, had a smaller head than a child of one year. The notes follow the same order as that of the observations.
Time, 8.15 A. M.—The child yawns. She grasps with animation at some human skulls that she sees on a table near her, and directs her look to charts on the walls. She puts her fingers into her nostrils, brushes her apron with both hands, polishes my watch, which I have offered her and she has seized, holds it to one ear, then to one of her father's ears, draws her mouth into a smile, seems to be pleased by the ticking, holds the watch to her father's other ear, then to her own other ear, laughs, and repeats the experiment several times. Her head is very mobile.
The child now folds a bit of paper that I have given her, rolls it up awkwardly, wrinkling her forehead the while, chews up the paper and laughs aloud. Saliva flows from her mouth almost incessantly. Then the child begins to eat a biscuit, giving some of it, however, to her father and the attendant, putting her biscuit to their lips, and this with accuracy at once, whereas in the former case the watch was held at first near the ear, to the temple, and not till afterward to the ear itself.
The girl is very lively; she strikes about her in a lively manner with her hands, sees charts hanging high on the walls, points to them with her finger, throws her head back upon her neck to see them better, and moves her fingers in the direction of the lines of the diagrams. At last weariness seems to come on. The child puts an arm around the neck of her father, sits on his lap, but is more and more restless.
8.50.—Quiet. To appearance, the child has fallen asleep.
8.55.—Awake again. The child sees well, hears well, smells well; obeys some few commands, e. g., she gives her hand. But with this her intellectual accomplishments are exhausted. She does not utter a word.