Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/879

PHRENOLOGY 843 soul and intellect, the Pythagorean doctrine became uni versally received among philosophers. According to the Galenical theory of life, the animal spirits arising from the brain are conveyed thence by the arteries through the body. These animal spirits have their origin in the ven tricles of the brain, and pass thence to the heart. It is true that in one place (viii. 159) he refers their origin to the cerebral substance, but the ventricular theory was that adopted by his followers. This view is held by the Greek physicians, 1 some of whom even speculated on the relation of the intellect to the shape and size of the head. The Arabians adopted the same hypothesis, so we find Aver- rhoes 2 correcting Aristotle s notion of cerebral physiology in favour of Galen s view. Rhazes 3 also extended this by giving a sketch of a scheme of psychic localization ; and Avicenna 4 added to the regions recognized by pre vious authors by interpolating one of his own. Such of the early Christian authors as had occasion to refer in their writings to the relation of soul to body naturally adopted the teaching of Galen, and suited it to their theology, thereby conferring on it an importance which rendered correction difficult. Thomas Aquinas 5 thus ex presses his acquiescence in the theory of localization, as also in a sense does Tertullian. 6 Early in the 13th century Albertus Magnus 7 gave a detailed description of the distribution of mental and psychical faculties in the head. The anterior region he assigned to judgment, the middle to imagination, and the posterior to memory. A somewhat similar allocation was made by Gordon, professor of medicine in Montpellier (1296), 8 who assigned common sensation and the reception of impressions to the anterior cornua of the lateral ven tricles, phantasia to the posterior, this power being two fold (imaginativa and cogitativa), judgment or eestimativa to the third ventricle, and memory to the fourth. 9 Figures of a similar division were given by Petrus Montagnana 10 and Lodovico Dolce, 11 still later by Ghiradelli 12 of Bologna and by Theodore Gall of Antwerp. 13 That the " vital spirits " resided in the ventricles was doubted by many, and refuted by a few of the anatomists of the 17th century. Bauhin in 162 1 14 attacked the old view, and Hoffmann of Altorf curry Trepiexeffdai Trd/uTroXu. " See also v. 288, viii. 159, xv. 360. In his Defaiitiones medicae (467, xix. 459) he says that the brain has a i//t>XiKT7 dvva/jus, but does not specify in what part the power inheres. 1 See Paulus J5gineta, Stephens s ed., 1567, cap. 62, col. 363, also Actuarius, De actionibus et affectibus spiritus animalis, Paris, 1556, p. 22, c. 7. 2 Comment, in Arist., Latin tr., Venice, 1550, vi. 73. 3 " Imaginatio quidem in duobus veutriculis anterioribus perficitur. Cogitatio vero in medio expletur. Memoria antem posteriorem possidet ventriculam." De re medica, Gerard s tr., Basel, 1554, i. p. 9. 4 Lib. can., 1507, p. 19, and De naturalibus, c. 6. 5 Summa theologies, ed. Migne, i. pp. 1094, 1106-7. Prochaska and his translator Laycock (Mind and Brain, ii. 163) charge Duns Scotus with holding this view, which most probably he did ; he does not express it, however, but simply specifies the cerebrum and its root, the spinal cord, as the source of the nerves along which sensory impulses travel. Comment, de anima, Leyden, 1637, i. 515. 6 De anima, cxiv. , ed. Franeker, 1597, p. 268. 7 Opera, Leyden, 1651, iii. 124, vi. 20. 8 Lilium medicinse, Venice, 1494, 101. 9 Avicenna s fifth region is interposed between imaginativa and sestimativa (De naturalibus, c. vi.). Thomas Aquinas combines the last two, which he says are possessed by the same eminence (op. cit., i. 1107). On the other hand, he says of ratio particularis, "medici assignant determinatum organum, scilicet mediam partem capitis " (i. 1106). 10 Physiognomia, Padua, 1491. 11 Dialogo nel quale si ragione del modo di accrecere e conservar la memoria, Venice, 1562, 27. 12 Physiognomia, 1670. 3 Tabulse element, sciential, Home, 1632. 14 Theatr. anat., Basel, 1621, iii. 314 ; Caspar Hoffmann, De usu cerebri, Leipsic, 1619. See also Spigelius, De corp. humani fabrica, Amsterdam, 1645, 296 ; Varolius, 1591, p. 6 ; Wepfer, Historiarum apoplecticarum potissimum anatomise subjectorum aucta- rium, Amsterdam, 1681. See also many of the anatomical works of this age, such as those of Fernel, Cabrol, Argenterius, Rolfinck, &c. showed that, as the ventricles were closed cavities, they could not transmit any material fluid. That these spirits existed at all was doubted by Alexander Benedictus, 15 Plater, 16 and a few others ; but they were believed in by the great majority of 17th and even of 18th century medical writers, many of whom conceived that the ven tricles were "semper pleni spiritibus animalibus flammulis similibus, quorum beneficiis intelligimus, sentimus,et move- mus," 17 and the opponents of this view were strongly assailed by Riolan and others as revolutionary. The grey matter of the surface of the cerebrum was first re cognized as the true dynamic element by Malpighi 18 and Willis. 19 The latter regarded the convoluted surface of the cerebrum as the seat of the memory and the will, the convolutions being intended to retain the animal spirits for the various acts of imagination and memory. Ima gination he described as seated in the corpus callosum, sense -perception in the corpus striatum, and impetus et perturbatio in the basal parts of the cerebrum above the crura. The thalami he regarded as the centres of sight and the cerebellum of involuntary acts. Columbus 20 ridi culed the idea that the convoluted surface can have any thing to do with intellect, as the ass, a proverbially stupid animal, has a convoluted cerebrum. According to his view, the convolutions are for the purpose of lightening the brain and facilitating its movements. Succeeding anatomists simply varied these localizations according to their respective fancies. Lancisi placed sense -perception in the corpus callosum, Vieussens in the centrum ovale majus. Descartes supposed the soul to be seated in the pineal gland, Lotze in the pons Varolii. 21 Meyer considered abstract ideas to arise in the cerebellum, and memory to have its seat at the roots of the nerves. 22 Of later writers three deserve special notice as having largely prepared the way for the more modern school of phrenology. Unzer of Halle in his work on physiology ex tended the pre-existing theories of localization. Metzger, 23 twenty years before the publication of Prochaska s work, had proposed to make a series of observations on the anatomical characters of the brains of persons of marked intellectual peculiarity ; but it is not known to the present writer whether he ever carried this into effect. In a more special manner Prochaska of Vienna may be looked upon as the father of phrenology, as in his work on the nervous system, published in Vienna in 1784, are to be found the germs of the later views which were propounded in that city twelve years later. 24 The system formulated by Gall is thus a modern ex pansion of an old empirical philosophy, and its immediate parentage is easily traced, although, according to Gall s 18 Alexander Benedictus, Anatomica, vol. iii., Basel, 1527. Quer- cetanus is said by Laycock (following Prochaska) to have assailed this doctrine of spirits, on what ground is not apparent, as he certainly expresses himself as a believer in the old view ; see Tetras graviss. totius capitis affect., Marburg, 1606, x. 89. Possibly Prochaska may allude to an obscure passage in the work of the other Quercetanus (Eustachius), Acroamaton in librum Hippocratis, Basel, 1549, p. 14, not to the better-known Josephus Armeniacus, but he gives no reference. 16 Opera, Basel, 1625, col. 22, 89. 17 Joelis opera medica, Amsterdam, 1663, 22. 18 "Epist. de cerebro et cort. cereb. ad Fracassatum," in Opp., Geneva, 1685, vol. ii. 19 De anima brutorum, Oxford, 1677, p. 71, "hse particulae sub- tilissimae, spiritus animales dictse, partium istarum substantias corti- cales primo subeuntes, exinde in utriusque meditullia," &c., also p. 76 sq. - De re anatomica, Frankfort, 1593, p. 350. 21 Fechner, Psychophysica, ii. 382. 22 Some of the mediaeval views were very fanciful, thus Schabtai Donolo taught that the spirit of life has its seat in the brain-mem brane, expanded over the brain and snbarachnoid fluid, as the Shekinah in the heavens arched over the earth and waters. See Der Mensch als Gottes Ebenbild, ed. Jellinek, Leipsic, 1854. 23 Vermischte inedicinische Schriften, 1764, i. 58. 24 See Laycock s trans., in Sydenh. Society s Pub., 1851.