CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 125 



weights of any eminently intellectual woman. The brains 

 of scores of men of genius and exceptional mentality have 

 been weighed, but we are utterly ignorant of the weight of 

 brain of such women as Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Madame de 

 Stael, Maria Theresa, Sophie Germain, George Sand, Har- 

 riet Martineau, George Eliot, Eleanor Ormerod, Mary 

 Somerville, and others of the same caliber. The only data 

 so far available, regarding the average brain weight of 

 women, are such as have been obtained from the inmates 

 of hospitals, prisons and pauper institutions. And yet we 

 are asked to accept the average based on such data as a 

 fair term of comparison with the average male brain weight 

 as increased by the superior weight of brain of such men as 

 Cuvier and Turgenieff. And this is called science ! * 



The attempt, then, to prove by weighing and measuring 

 and studying brains that man is the intellectual superior 

 of woman has been an ignominious failure. The old belief 

 that woman is by nature and cerebral organization less 



of Sonya's death, was 1385 grams. The brain- weight of her illus- 

 trious contemporary, Hermann von Helmholtz, was 1440 grams. But 

 when the body-weights of these two eminent mathematicians are borne 

 in mind Sonya was short and slender it will be seen that the rela- 

 tive amount of brain tissue was greater in the woman than in the 

 man. Cf. Das Gehirn des Mathematikers Sonja Kovalewski m 

 Biologische Untersuchungen, von Prof. Dr. Gustaf Eetzius, pp. 1-17, 

 Stockholm, 1900. 



i The reader who desires more detailed information respecting 

 the brain-weights of men and women of various races and the rela- 

 tion of brain-weight to intelligence may consult with profit the fol- 

 lowing works and articles : Memoires d ' Anthropologie de Paul Broca, 

 5 Vols., Paris, 1871-1888; Alte und Neue Gehirn Probleme nebst einer 

 1078 Falle umfassenden Gehirngewichstatistik aus den Kgl. patho- 

 logisch-anatomischen Institut zu Munchen, von W. W. Wendt, Miin- 

 chen, 1909; Gehirngewicht und Intelligenz, by Dr. F. K. Walter, 

 Rostok, 1911 ; Gehirngewicht und Intelligent, by Dr. J. Draseke, Ham- 

 burg, in Archiv fur Eassen und Gesellschafts Biologe, pp. 499-522, 

 1906; Brain Weights and Intellectual Capacity, by Joseph Simms, 

 M. D., in the Popular Science Monthly, December, 1898, and The 

 Growth of the Brain, by H. H. Donaldson, London, 1895. 



