brains of celebrated Germans, found the capacity very great in eight, very small in four. The latter was the case with Liebig, Döllinger, Hausmann, in whose favour advanced age may be advanced as an excuse; but this reason does not exist for Guido Reni, Gambetta, Harless, Foscolo (1426), Dante (1493), Hermann (1358), Lasker (1300). Shelley's head was remarkably small.
In the face of all these facts I shall not be taxed with temerity if I conclude that, as genius is often expiated by inferiority in some psychic functions, it is often associated with anomalies in that organ which is the source of its glory.
Reference should here be made to the ventricular dropsy in Rousseau's brain,[1] to the meningitis of Grossi, of Donizetti, and of Schumann, to the cerebral œdema of Liebig and of Tiedemann. In the last-named, besides remarkable thickness of the skull, especially at the forehead, Bischoff noted adherence of the dura mater to the bone, thickening of the arachnoid and atrophy of the brain. In the physician Fuchs, Wagner found the fissure of Rolando interrupted by a superficial convolution, an anomaly which Giacomini found only once in 356 cases, and Heschl once in 632.[2] Pascal’s brain showed grave lesions of the cerebral hemispheres. It has recently been discovered that Cuvier's voluminous brain was affected by dropsy; in Lasker's there was softening of the corpora striata, pachymeningitis, hæmorrhage, and endarteritis deformans of the artery of the fissure of Sylvius.[3]
In eighteen brains of German men of science Bischoff and Rüdinger found congenital anomalies of the cerebral convolutions, especially of the parietal.[4] In the brains of
- ↑ Bulletin de la Société d’ Anthropologie, 1861.
- ↑ Die tiefen Windungen des Menschenhirnes, 1877.
- ↑ Mendel, Centralblatt, No. 4, 1884.
- ↑ Ein Beitrag zur Anatomie der Affenspalte und der Interparietal Furche beim Menschen nach Rasse, Geschlecht, und Individualität, 1886.
those men of genius who present a feeble weight. Fuchs had a cerebral surface of 22,1005 square c. and Gauss of 21,9588; while with the same weight the same surface in an unknown woman was 20,4115 and in a workman 18,7672.
