488 BRINTON — MEASUREMENT OF THOUGHT AS FUNCTION. [Oct. 11, 



varied alike. In other cases, however, for many consecutive days 

 no agreement between the two series is apparent. It is greatly to 

 be desired that this matter should receive a thorough investigation, 

 but the method by which the problem may be successfully attacked 

 is not obvious. 



THE MEASUREMENT OF THOUGHT AS FUNCTION. 



BY DANIEL G. BIIINTON, M.D. 



{Read October 11, 1897.) 



I can best introduce what I have to say by a quotation from the 

 address of Vice-President McGee before the late meeting of the 

 American Association at Detroit. He refers in it to a distinguished 

 member of our own Society who, I am glad to see, is with us to- 

 night ; and the words I am about to quote are of such a tenor that 

 that they cannot be otherwise than agreeable. Mr. McGee said : 



''Less than a quarter of a century ago Barker was deemed bold 

 unto recklessness for undertaking to correlate vital and physical 

 forces, and many heads were shaken doubtfully when, in his presi- 

 dential address before the American Association at Boston in i88o, 

 the same brilliant experimentalist argued from the application of 

 Mosso's plethysmograph that mental force also may be weighed 

 and measured, so that it must be regarded as interconvertible with 

 other forms of energy; yet less than half a generation of organic 

 chemistry has established these revolutionary propositions beyond 

 perad venture " (^The Science of Humanity, by W. J. McGee, Vice- 

 Pres., Address before Section H, at Detroit, 1897). 



These words must have been intended by their writer to have 

 important limitations. If taken in their ordinary sense they would 

 convey a very erroneous idea of the achievements of physical and 

 chemical science. 



It is quite true that the action of thinking is in one sense a func- 

 tion of the brain, and is accompanied by cell destruction, by in- 

 creased temperature and by the increased elimination of inorganic 

 matter through the secretory organs. For this reason it was said 

 by one of the older physiologists that "without phosphorus there 

 is no thought." In a somewhat similar manner others have under- 

 taken to demonstrate that thought is merely a mechanical process,. 



