184 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. CHAP. xvi. 



to experiment on the brains of living animals, which, 

 were excited by weak galvanic currents applied to the 

 exposed surface at different spots, and the resulting visi- 

 ble effects observed. In this way it was found that the 

 excitement of certain limited areas caused the contrac- 

 tion of definite sets of muscles, leading to motion of the 

 limbs, body, face, or head of the animal. This was 

 termed the Localization of Functions of the Brain, and 

 was at once adduced by popular writers as giving the 

 final death blow to phrenology, since it showed (as they 

 ignorantly assumed) that portions of the brain which 

 the phrenologists had alleged to be the organs of purely 

 mental faculties were really only organs of muscular 

 movements. Such writers entirely overlooked the very 

 obvious considerations that the brain may be, in fact 

 must be, the centre for the production of movements as 

 well as for initiating ideas ; and that the rude method of 

 exciting the living brain by galvanism was not likely to 

 develop the purely mental phenomena, which, indeed, in 

 the animals experimented on, could only be exhibited 

 through muscular movements. Again, it is quite pos- 

 sible, and even probable, that, while the cortex or gray 

 matter on the surface of the brain is the seat of ideation, 

 the more deeply seated matter may contain the centres 

 for muscular and nervous action, and may be the part 

 which is excited by the galvanic current. But this very 

 fact of the connection of certain definite brain-areas with 

 muscular motion is no new discovery, as modern writers 

 seem to suppose, but was known to Dr. Gall himself, 

 although he did not possess the modern appliances for 

 the full experimental demonstration of it. In one of his 

 first writings upon his discoveries his letter to Baron de 



