WEIGHT OF THE BRAIN. 333 



clares he has ascertained the real nervous substance to be so incon- 

 siderable, that he thinks " it is, perhaps, not assuming too much 



was entirely Gall's, and completed before Dr. Spurzheim knew any thing of the 

 matter. Possibly Dr. Spurzheim occasionally made a few little mechanical dis- 

 coveries, like the person who was Gall's previous dissector, a M. Niklas ; of 

 whom Gall says in his preface (4to. vol. i. p. xvi. ), " I taught M. Niklas my method 

 of dissecting the brain ; and, thanks to his industry and address, he made such pro- 

 gress that he directed my attention to many mechanical points till then unknown." 

 But Dr. Spurzheim, like him, worked under Gall : was ordered to dissect this and 

 that, and to ascertain what was the fact on this point or on that : and the shades of 

 discovery, as Gall terms them, made after he was engaged by Gall, must evidently 

 be ascribed to the working master-mind, and not to the fingers of him who only 

 obeyed, and received his knowledge all but perfect at first, and was very long before 

 he "could be taught by Gall to dissect a brain decently according to Gall's 

 method. Gall told me that he taught Dr. Fossati in a quarter of the time it cost 

 him to teach Dr. Spurzheim. Because M. Niklas worked and discovered me- 

 chanically, Dr. Spurzheim declares (Notes, <$<?., p. 61.) that the investigations 

 directed by Gall had merely mechanical views, and, referring to the last quota- 

 tion for his proof, he insinuates that Gall's investigations were too mechanical ; 

 whereas, Gall's merit was in rejecting all mechanical views. Dr. Spurzheim's 

 character is put by himself in the strongest light in the Notes (p. 60. sq.), by 

 his quoting with triumph a passage from Gall, in which are the words, " beaucoup 

 de personnes manifestent une tendence singuliere d'attribuer NOS decouvertes a 

 d'autres, par exemple, a Reil ; et M. Spurzheim a deja dans plusieurs endroits re- 

 vendique NOTRE propri^te." Now, Dr. Spurzheim knew that Gall used the plural, 

 according to the habit of authors, for the singular : because, immediately before 

 this passage, in the large edition, Gall says, " /have repeated, and ordered to be 

 repeated, hundreds of times, the researches upon the brain. Sometimes we 

 thought we had discovered something new ; but, by repeating the dissections, 

 we have always come back to our old ideas. Therefore / have no reason to mo- 

 dify what /said in the first volume of this work." He then, in both editions, in 

 order, he says, to set those right who ignorantly attribute the discoveries to others, 

 subjoins to this passage the declarations already quoted, of Reil and Loder, 

 respecting his anatomical discoveries, which they ascribe to Gall alone; and 

 finishes with a summary of all the anatomical and physiological discoveries, 

 speaking of them as his own entirely. (Gall, 4to. vol. iv. p. 377. sq. ; 8vo. t. vi. 

 p. 490.) In the volume and a half to which Gall affixed Dr. Spurzheim's name 

 with his own, he always wrote in the plural ; in the rest, he from the first wrote 

 generally in the singular ; and he refers in the singular to what he had said in 

 the first volume in the plural. (See 1. c. p. 378. supra; and vol. ii. p. 213.) I 

 give another striking instance of Dr. Spurzheim's self-refutation, and the short- 

 sightedness for which he was remarked in Paris when under the influence of his 

 inordinate love of fame. Gall kindly affixed Dr. Spurzheim's name with his 

 own, not only to his great work, but also to the memoir presented to the French 

 Institute. Yet Dr. Spurzheim acknowledges that the Commissioners received the 

 discoveries as Gall's; for, in order to show that Reil must have known the 



