FUNCTIONS, OF THE CEKEBEUM. 339 



and one is reported by Mr. Marshall, of an idiotic boy, twelve 

 years old, whose brain weighed but 8^ ounces. 1 Mr. Brad- 

 ley, in a late number of the Journal of Anatomy and Phys- 

 iology^ gives an elaborate description of the brain of an 

 idiot, thirty-five years of age, extremely emaciated at the 

 time of his death, when he weighed but sixty pounds. The 

 encephalon, including the cerebrum, cerebellum, and pons, 

 weighed twenty-eight ounces, and the proportion of the 

 cerebellum to the cerebrum was as 1 to 5 '5. In the healthy 

 adult male, of ordinary weight, the encephalon weighs fifty 

 ounces, and the proportion of the cerebellum to the cerebrum 

 is as 1 to 8f. Mr. Bradley calls attention to the proportion 

 of the cerebellum to the cerebrum in this case, stating that 

 this is common in the encephalon of idiots. 2 In idiots, the 

 weight of the body is generally much below the normal stand- 

 ard ; and in the case reported by Bradley, the proportionate 

 weight of the encephalon to that of the entire body is even 

 greater than in the healthy adult. If, for example, we double 

 the weight of the body and the brain, we would have, for 

 one hundred and twenty pounds of weight, an encephalon 

 of fifty-six ounces. This. point, however, cannot be admitted 

 as an argument against the fact that congenital idiocy is 

 usually attended with an abnormally small development of 

 the hemispheres. Most idiots take little or no exercise ; they 

 are under-sized, and have but little muscular vigor ; and it is 

 probable that the general development of the body is more 

 or less a consequence of the abnormal cerebral condition. 



1 MARSHALL, Brain and Calvarium of a Microcephale. Anthropological He- 

 view, London, 1863, No. ii., Appendix, containing the Transactions of the An- 

 thropological Society of London, p. ix. 



2 BRADLEY, Description of the Brain of an Idiot. Journal of Anatomy and 

 Physiology, Cambridge and London, 1871, vol. vi., p. 67. 



Gratiolet, in an article on microcephaly, states that the development of the 

 cerebellum, in proportion to the size of the cerebrum, is enormous, and that 

 the reduction in the size of the encephalon is almost exclusively in the cerebral 

 hemispheres. (Memoire sur la microcephalie. Journal de la physiologic, Paris, 

 1860, tome iii., p. 115.) 



