Phrenology, or the doctrine of the mind : and of the relations between its manifestations and the body.
- Johann Spurzheim
- Date:
- 1825
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Phrenology, or the doctrine of the mind : and of the relations between its manifestations and the body. Source: Wellcome Collection.
76/352 page 60
![PM RE NO LOGY. GO ])latcs of’ the skull being separated, the brain lies at a consider¬ able depth beneath. This occurs not only among the lower animals, but also in the aged of the human kind, between the two plates of whose skulls there is often a considerable space. In hogs, the brain lies one inch, and in the elephant thirteen inches deeper than is indicated by the external fable of the skull. Cuvier, to overcome this obstacle to precise observa¬ tion, draws the tangent or vertical line from the internal plate. In many animals, as in some varieties of the cat tribes and of the rodentia, the brain inclines so much downwards behind and under the frontal sinus, that it becomes impossible to draw a facial angle from the most prominent point of the fore¬ head. The facial angle is moreover a very imperfect means of esti¬ mating the faculties of man. We have seen negroes with ex¬ tremely prominent jaw-bones manifest great intellectual facul¬ ties, because their forehead s were large. Their facial angle, how¬ ever, would have made them inferior to many stupid Europeans, whose foreheads are small, but whose jaws project little. From all these considerations it follows, that the facial angle, as a means of measuring the moral sentiments and intellectual fa¬ culties, is perfectly useless. Daubenton’s occipital angle is formed by a horizontal line, drawn from the floor of the orbit to the posterior edge of the occipital foramen, and a vertical line cutting this and passing between the condyles over the surface of the occiput. Now this occipital angle, according to the observation of Blumen- bach, measures from eighty to ninety degrees in all animals, and, consequently, does not differ proportionately to their varied faculties. The occipital angle would also indicate the developement of the occiput only, and not of the lateral and superior parts of the brain ; this alone is sufficient to prove its inutility. xJ Some physiologists, as Soeinnierring and Cuvier, have eom- j)aied t)u' size ot tlie brain in eeneral A\ i<h the state ol tlie fiu’C;](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2929597x_0076.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
