and physiologist of Stockholm, who became professor of anatomy and physiology at Berlin in 1810. It reached the unexampled figure of 78.3 ounces; while the brain of Turgenieff, the heaviest among famous men, was 71 ounces—showing a difference of 7.3 ounces in behalf of the inferior mind.
Since writing the above, the following appeared in Tit-Bits, a weekly paper published in London, England, March 19, 1898:
"It must not be assumed, however, that intellect is in direct ratio to the weight of the brain; for while the brains of certain intellectual men, such as. . . Dr. Abercromby, weighed more than 60 ounces, a certain Strand newspaper-boy, who was in intelligence almost an idiot, had a brain which weighed no less than 80 ounces."
Dr. Austin Flint, of New York, in his Physiology, gives the average weight of the brains of men as 50.2 ounces. Dr. Peacock, of Great Britain, makes it 50 ounces 3 drachms between twenty-five and fifty years of age. Dr. Thurman gives 49 ounces as the average throughout Europe, while Dr. F. Tiedemann, a famous naturalist of Germany, reckons it at 53.2 ounces.[1] Dr. Krause, a learned German, places it still higher, at 55.4 ounces.[2] Now, if we strike a balance between the highest and the lowest of these estimates, the mean will be 52.2. Then, recalling the average of our sixty famous men, which we found to be 51.3 ounces, it is shown to be nine tenths of an ounce below the average of ordinary men.
Our tables of national average brain weights do not quite agree, because some of the subjects had been wasted by disease for many months before death, whereby the brain was diminished along with other parts of the body. Those who, like Dr. Boyd's subjects, died in hospital, showed too light an average for healthy Englishmen. Dr. Krause's subjects may have been healthy men killed in battle, and those of Tiedemann persons who died suddenly. Executed criminals show a fairly high average of brain weight, because there has been in their case no diminution through long-continued illness.[3] We should recollect that Whewell, the famous English philosopher and head master of Trinity College, Cambridge, England, was in good health when killed by a fall, from his horse; so was Gambetta, when his life was ended by a pistol shot. The brain, however, suffers less from the power of disease than the general bodily form. One month under the most wasting sickness would probably not
- ↑ Medical News and Gazette, London, June 16, 1888, p. 521.
- ↑ Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia, February 23, 1884.
- ↑ Eleven Chinamen, found by Dr. C. Clapham to afford an average of 50.4 ounces, had been killed in a typhoon, and were therefore in no wise wasted by disease. (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, London, England, vol. vii, p. 90.)
