Anatomical Characters of the Human Brain. 



23 



who spoke fifty hmguages gave a negative result, for nothing peculiar 

 was found in it. However, Hansemann states that we should expect 

 to find a morphological basis to account for geniuses of the first rank, 

 for they possess qualities peculiar to themselves. In fact the config- 

 urations of the brains of Helmholtz and Menzel showed some peculi- 

 arities which may support this theory. 



The one ray of hope in the study of the peculiarities of the config- 

 uration of the gyri and sulci comes from the comparison of brains of 

 members of the same family which often show many similarities. 

 This important discoveiy was made by Spitzka,^^ who observed that 

 there were hereditary resemblances in the brains of three brothers. 

 This was fully confirmed'by Karplus^^ in studying the brains of 21 

 groups of relations in each of which he found a marked similarity 

 of the gyri and sulci. The configuration of the right side has a ten- 

 dency to repeat itself on the right side, and the left on the left, but 

 peculiarities on the right side are not found on the left in near rel- 

 atives. There is an hereditary tendency in the fissuration of the brain 

 as there is in the other features. 



JSTevertheless, even if we should find that the brains of two eminent 

 men of the same family were much alike we have by no means shown 

 that the genius has an anatomical basis. Furthermore, it seems to 

 have been established that anatomical variations often show different 

 percentage in different communities. Schwalbe and Pfitzer^^ have 

 shown, for instance, that the absence of the psoas minor is as follows. 



^'Spitzka. American Anthropologist, VI, 1904. 



'-Karplus. Obersteiner's Arbeiten ans d. Neurol. Inst, XII. Wien, 1905. 



^^Schwalbe and Pfitzer, Morph. Arbeiten, Bd. 3. 



