Editorial, Neurology and Psychology. 187 



ventricles survived to some extent until the eighteenth cen- 

 tury. Malpighi was the first to ascribe the higher functions 

 to the gray matter. 



Now, to return to the period following Descartes, we find 

 the rudiments of the theory of localization rapidly develop- 

 ing. Willis located memory and the will in the convolutions. 

 Imagination was situated in the corpus callosum, sense per- 

 ception in the striatum, sight in the thalamus, and involuntary 

 acts in the cerebellum. Lancasi placed sense perception in 

 the callosum, while others located memory there. Aleyer 

 considered the cerebellum as the organ of abstraction and 

 located memory at the roots of the cranial nerves. 



Thus the way was prepared for Gall and Spurzheim. 

 Though phrenology is primarily a system of psychology 

 rather than of physiology, its hold upon the mind of the 

 people is largely due to the purely empirical form in which 

 it was clothed. Those who were incompetent to discuss the 

 propriety of dividing all mental manifestations into twenty- 

 six or forty-three faculties fancied it a matter of mere obser- 

 vation to determine whether special development of various 

 regions of the head coincided with great preponderance of 

 such faculties. 



Gall's theory was based on the fallacious belief that the 

 skull depends for its form on the growing brain, and therefore, 

 its surface is a reflex of the development of the brain, and 

 that the size and configuration alone determine mental 

 power. 



What really gave phrenology its popular power was the 

 fact that it served to give a scientific character to certain the- 

 ories which survived astrology under the name physiognomy 

 or chiromantia. When deprived of other methods of antici- 

 pating the future, the people eagerly grasped at what prom- 

 ised to be an indirect method of accomplishing the same 

 thing. Many of the principles utilized by these sciences are 

 to-day recognized, as the effect of the environment upon the 

 body, the effect of habit on the mind, the eftect of the mind 



