A Study of Cerebral Anthropology 19 



many unsolved problems, so many interdependent questions, that 

 we may repeat the question of Retzius ( 1896) : " Giebt es denn, die 

 Hauptziige ausgenommen, wirklich fiir die gesammtc Anordnung 

 der Furchen und Windungen des Gehirns allgemeingiiltige 

 morphologische Gesetze ? " 



The lack of uniformity in nomenclature and the absence of 

 illustrations or the employment of diagrammatic figures by many 

 authors makes a comparison of statements often most difficult. 

 The most that I can hope to do is to place the various investiga- 

 tions in such a relation to each other that one may have some 

 idea of the evidence in favor of one side or another of the ques- 

 tion under discussion. It will be necessary to disregard great 

 masses of data which have been collected under the impression 

 that fixed morphological characters were being dealt with, but 

 which, later investigations have proven, are only the accidental 

 foldings brought about during development, and are so incon- 

 stant as to be meaningless. 



The question of asymmetry is referred to only in its relation to 

 criminal brains, to satisfy those investigators which from time to 

 time have endeavored to show that such a condition was an indica- 

 tion of delinquency. That there is a diffierence in weight and 

 fissure pattern between the right and left hemispheres in the brain 

 of normal man, there is no question, but that the absence of such 

 variation indicates low mentality, or that wide variation has a 

 psychic significance, has not been proven ; consequently we have 

 no right to assume in the case of the individual criminal that 

 the presence or absence of asymmetry is in any way related to 

 delinquency. While the data in a great many studies is presented 

 for the two sides separately, in the subsequent pages I shall com- 

 bine these and consider the results for the hemisphere, regardless 

 of whether it has appeared more frequently on one side than on 

 the other. 



Marshall (1875) said of asymmetry, "I believe that some at 

 least of this is due to the right-handedness of man." Cunning- 

 ham (1902) could find no structural characters to account for the 

 functional superiority of the left cerebrum, but said, " I shall be- 

 lieve that it exists, and am persuaded that inquiry has been con- 



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