THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



APRIL, 1895. 



SOME CURIOSITIES OF THINKING.* 



By M. ALLEN STAER, M. D., 



PROFESSOR OF DISEASES OF THE MIND AND NERVOUS SYSTEM, COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND 



SURGEONS, COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 



IT is evident to any one who has kept abreast with the recent 

 progress in psychology that the advance in the knowledge of 

 mental processes has been greatly aided of late by contributions 

 from certain collateral branches of science. The older method of 

 introspection had, indeed, resulted in establishing many facts and 

 in formulating numerous laws of psychical action. But this 

 method had many defects, and it must be admitted by any candid 

 observer that the debt which psychology owes to more modern 

 methods of research is a deep and lasting one. To these methods 

 also we owe much of our present knowledge of what may be 

 termed the mechanism of thinking. 



It may not be without interest, therefore, to review some of the 

 results which modern studies have reached, especially as such 

 a review will bring before us some entertaining curiosities of 

 thinking. 



And, first, we must mention the remarkable discoveries in re- 

 gard to the localization of brain functions which may be traced 

 to physiological experimentation upon the lower animals. It was 

 long ago determined by Fritsch and Hitzig, Ferrier, Munk, and 

 Beevor and Horsley that in the lower animals certain districts 

 upon the surface of the brain could be laid down, to each of which 

 a definite sensory or motor function could be assigned. Within 

 the past decade it has been absolutely proved by pathologists, 



* Read before the Philosophical Club of Princeton. 

 VOL. XLTI. 54 



