6o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tive sensations responding to nothing external, and symptoms of anaes- 

 thesia manifested by an abolition of the perceptions belonging to the 

 affected part. These two classes of symptoms may also alternate in 

 the same disease, as in the motor and intellectual regions. 



A characteristic case, confirming this theory, is that of a child who 

 fell on his head and buried a portion of the parietal in the surface of 

 the brain. He became blind in the eye of the opposite side. He 

 was trepanned, and the blindness ceased immediately. Soon inflam- 

 mation arose at the wounded part ; blindness returned and lasted till 

 the inflammation disappeared. Compression of the visual center, first 

 by the bone and then by the products of inflammation, was the evident 

 cause of this intermittent blindness. Other cases establish the possi- 

 bility of abnormal stimulation of the visual center. 



The centers of hearing, taste, odor, and touch are localized in the 

 same way, and, if the observations are not very numerous, they make 

 a strong presumption in favor of the localization actually adopted. It 

 sometimes happens that several centers are affected at the same time. 

 In these cases, if the lesion is an irritating one, there occurs from time 

 to time a simultaneous discharge producing a singular mixture of sen- 

 sations. One such patient, observed by Ferrier, said that he had the 

 sensation of a horrible odor and green thunder. We admit that the 

 clinical arguments in favor of the localization of the sensitive centers 

 are not so numerous or conclusive as could be wished. But only lately 

 have they been sought, and each day brings its contribution, which, 

 considering the rarity of limited lesions of the brain, can not be very 

 considerable. 



The localization of intelligence in the frontal region of the brain 

 was thought of long before our day. Gratiolet used the expression 

 frontal races for intelligent races ; and those of least intelligence have 

 been called occipital races. The frontal region is greatest in man 

 along with the predominance of reason and logic, while in women, who 

 are dominated by their sensibilities, the occipital region prevails. We 

 may cite to the same point the researches of Bordier on the skulls of 

 assassins, of Luys on the brains of fools and idiots, of Benedikt on the 

 brains of criminals, of Lombroso on the characters of habitual crimi- 

 nals. Their conclusions are analogous, and favor more than they oppose 

 the popular idea. 



But these arguments are not precise and positive. Happily there 

 are others more scientific and more conclusive. Take the celebrated 

 crowbar case, where a young man, who was blasting, had a pointed bar 

 of iron about three quarters of an inch in diameter and weighing three 

 pounds, driven, by a sudden explosion, upward through his head. It 

 entered at the angle of the under jaw, passed behind the nose and eyes, 

 penetrated the skull, and cutting the cerebral substance of the frontal 

 region passed out at the top of the head, above the forehead and to 

 the right of the median line. The wound was frightful. All one part 



