50 PERSONAL APPEARANCES IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. 



the position assumed by the phrenologist. It is a position 

 wholly untenable, and we should not have deemed it 

 worthy of refutation here were it not that misled by the 

 recent discoveries of physiologists with regard to certain 

 facts of experiment and disease, it has been reiterated that 

 not only have certain regions of the brain their special 

 functions, but that these regions are indicated on the 

 surface of the skull by prominences which denote similar 

 development of the brain within. Three distinct facts 

 converge to utterly explode the phrenologist's standpoint. 

 The first is that the brain is not in actual contact with 

 the skull, but is separated from it by a membranous sac 

 between the inner wall of which and the surface of the 

 brain there is not any union. The second is that the 

 inner surface of the skull does not correspond at all in 

 configuration with the outer surface, for on the vault of 

 the skull there is interposed between what are called the 

 inner and outer tables a layer of loose textured bone of 

 variable thickness, and in the frontal region there is 

 developed to a very variable extent in different individuals 

 a series of cavities between these two tables, the size of 

 which amplifies or diminishes the amount of the forehead. 

 The third is that even in parts where these cells do not 

 exist, the thickness of the skull is very variable in different 

 individuals, and prominences occur in larger number and 

 extent in some than in others, according to the size and 



