150 THE HUMAN BODY. 



accent of Dante made the Ghibeline Farinata forget the 

 tortures of hell. 



In former times the musicians of the Swiss troops in the 

 service of France were forbidden, under severe penalties, to 

 play their national airs, and especially the "Ranz des Vaches," 

 as it caused the soldiers to desert, or made them home-sick. 

 Taste and smell are not less powerful in awakening memory, 

 even after many years have passed. 



The seat of memory has been vainly sought in the brain. 

 Gall and several other physiologists have placed it in the 

 anterior lobes, and the phrenological school assigns certain 

 circumscribed portions to the memory of words, of places, 

 of numbers, and of persons, &c. But this localization is not 

 justified by observation, and it is no more required by the 

 memory than by the other faculties. Indeed, the impossi- 

 bility of attributing to the brain the projections which vary 

 solely according to the dimensions of the frontal sinus, was 

 one of the objections to the doctrine of Gall. It is remark- 

 able, also, that contrary to the opinion of phrenologists, the 

 greater or less prominence of the eye (that is, the greater or 

 less depth of the orbit) bears no relation to the development 

 of the memory. There is more foundation for the observa- 

 tion of particular aptitudes of memory, specially to retain 

 words, facts, numbers, &c. We may go still further, if we 

 observe the changes induced by disease, for in certain cases 

 the memory fails to retain substantives, or verbs, or other 

 classes of words only, while all others are retained without 

 difficulty. We may therefore suppose that certain parts of 

 the brain are devoted specially to each detail of the memory 

 as to the other faculties, as to the sensation of every nervous 

 filament which transmits a tactile impression from any point 

 of the body. This almost infinitesimal division of the brain 

 will not astonish us in view of analogous facts derived from 

 observation, or which reason imposes upon us, although no 

 material demonstration is possible; yet we must also admit 

 that the brain, as an organ of apprehension, acts as a whole, 

 and that if a distinct apparatus exists for the memory, its 

 action is at once single and multiform, each of its parts re- 

 ceiving with equal aptitude the impression of the ideas which 



