BRAIN WEIGHTS AND INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY. 249 



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 in- 

 tellectual men, such as . . . Dr. Abercromby, weighed more than 

 60 ounces, a certain Strand newspaper-boy, who was in intel- 

 ligence 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 aver- 

 age throughout Europe, while Dr. F. Tiedemann, a famous natural- 

 ist of Germany, reckons it at 53.2 ounces.* Dr. Krause, a learned 

 German, places it still higher, at 55.4 ounces. f 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.:}: 

 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. 



f 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.) 



