INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL FACULTIES. 125 



nerves through their influence upon the brain. Whenever 

 in fact, we see a person become stupid and insensible, we 

 may be certain that the brain has suffered some physical 

 change ; and where in cases of sickness, we see the mental 

 faculties unimpaired to the last, we may be equally sure, that 

 the brain is not affected. 



6. The following facts also show that the brain is the or- 

 gan of the mind. A man received a blow on his head, and 

 immediately lost his mental faculties, and his bodily power. 

 His appetite and digestion were good ; the blood circulated 

 freely ; and his breathing and pulse were natural. He con- 

 tinued in this state more than a year, when a surgeon raised 

 up a piece of bone which had been driven in upon the brain. 

 His reason was immediately restored ; the next day he 

 spoke, and in a short time he recovered entirely ; but he 

 could recollect nothing of what had happened since the acci- 

 dent. Not long since a beggar exhibited himself in Paris, 

 who had lost a portion of his skull ; his brain was only cov- 

 ered by the skin and membranes. For a trifling sum he 

 would allow any one to press on this exposed part. As soon 

 as any pressure was made he became wholly unconscious ; 

 but his intellect was immediately restored when the pressure 

 was taken off. 



7. (it has been objected to the brain's being considered the 

 seat of the mind, that in some cases, considerable disease 

 has been found affecting an entire hemisphere without the 

 mental faculties having suffered ; but experiments on animals 

 show that a sudden lesion of one hemisphere only, does not 

 immediately produce complete stupor, and that this effect 

 does not follow until both are removed ; so that it appears 

 that one hemisphere aids the other, and compensates for its 

 inaction in the operations of the mind.; 



8. But though it is almost universally admitted, that the 

 brain is the seat of the higher intellectual faculties, yet some 

 physiologists, like Bichat, contend that the passions are 

 seated in the thoracic and abdominal viscera. It is, however, 



11* 



