Critical Digest. Iv 



sensation, reflex-motion (kicking, sucking, swallowing), finally higher 

 senses and movements under mental control — would hardly stand crit- 

 icism and should be replaced by the facts of anatomical development, as 

 a help for the study of neuropathology in the foetus and child. Follow- 

 ing Schaper and others, v. Monakow correctly avoids the traditional 

 ' spongioblasts ' and ' neuroblasts ' and reserves the latter name for the 

 developing 'neurone.' 



On p. 8, V. Monakow mentions an extensive communication be- 

 tween the hemisphere-cavities and the brain surface ; the two hemi- 

 sphere-vesicles are first open and later closed by the corpus callosum 

 towards the end of the 4th month ; the mesial and posterior ' gaps of 

 the hemisphere-wall ' are ' closed ' in a similar way by the growth of 

 the fornix. This description, though preceded by a correct statement 

 of the nature of the choroid plexus, is quite misleading, and as it 

 stands, incorrect. Finally we should object to the statement on p. 9, 

 that the first foldmgs of the hemisphere occur around the island ; the 

 folding of the hippocampal fissure and the parieto-occipital-calcarine 

 complex appear long before the * three principal branches of the Fis- 

 sura Sylvii,' which are not folds in the same sense but produced by 

 overlapping of the mantle over the stem. In a second edition or a 

 translation, this embryological part might well be lengthened a little, 

 as it might easily form the back-bone for the general morphology and 

 furnish important data for the pathology of the developing nervous 

 system only partly treated by v. Monakow. 



Pp. 11-25 are devoted to the fissures and convolutions of the fore- 

 brain. V. Monakow strongly insists on the amount of cortex which 

 lies in the fissures. We miss a statement of the interlocking of the 

 central fissure and the supra-marginal sulcus, an exceedingly useful 

 point for general orientation. Only once in over 300 of my autopsies 

 the central fissure did not reach the upper edge of the hemisphere, as 

 is pictured m fig. 5 and 6. In the brain mentioned (coming from an 

 average woman with alcoholic insanity) the ' paracentral lobule ' con- 

 tained no Betz cells ; they were found more laterally ; this (and other 

 facts) would lead me to expect a more intimate relation between in- 

 ternal cortical structure and configuration of the fissure than v. Mona- 

 kow admits on p. 12. 



In view of the fact that the description of convolutions and even 

 of fissures varies from brain to brain, it might be advisable to give up 

 a detailed description to text-books of anatomy and anthropology and 

 to insist more emphatically on typical land-marks customarily used in 

 autopsies. As photographs are really necessary and better than all 



