902 
physical characters, though it is not possi- 
ble in the space allotted me to do full 
justice to the theme. 
G. ARcHDALL REID. 
SoUTHSEA, ENGLAND. 
THE DESIRABILITY AND THE FEASIBILITY 
OF THE ACQUISITION OF SOME REAL AND 
ACCURATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE BRAIN 
BY PRE-COLLEGIATE SCHOLARS.* 
Never before has the need of informa- 
tion as to the structure and function of the 
nervous system been so keenly felt by ex- 
perts in various branches of knowledge and 
by practitioners of various specialties. 
Never before, likewise, has there been so 
general and so earnest a desire for such in- 
formation among the laity. For the first 
time has it been claimed by a prominent 
* This article is based upon a paper presented at 
the meeting of the American Society of Naturalists 
in Boston, December 29, 1896; it is an extension of 
the views expressed by that Society in 1891, 1892 
and 1893 regarding a science requirement for admis- 
sion to college and the introduction of natural his- 
tory studies into the lowest grades of schools. It also 
embodies the substance of published or unpublished 
remarks upon the subject made by the writer on the 
following occasions: 
1889.—In the article ‘Anatomical Terminology,’ 
Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences (VIII., 
p. 532, 782), occurs the following passage: ‘‘Aside 
from prejudice and lack of practical direction as to 
removing, preserving and examining the organ, there 
is but one valid reason why every child of ten years 
should not have an accurate and somewhat extended 
personal acquaintance with the gross anatomy of the 
mammalian brain; that obstacle is the enormous and 
unmanageable accumulation of objectionable names 
under which the parts are literally buried.”’ 
The foregoing paragraph is reproduced in a foot- 
note upon p. 335 of my paper, ‘ Neural Terms, Inter- 
national and National,’ Jour. Comp. Neurology, VI., 
216-352, December, 1896 (issued February, 1897). 
1896, a.—An address before the Home Congress, 
in Boston, October 13, 1896, was entitled ‘ Brains for 
the young: the desirability and the feasibility of the 
acquisition of some real knowledge of the brain by 
precollegiate scholars.’ Through misapprehension a 
report of the address was printed in the Arena for 
March, 1897, pp. 575-583. Although unauthorized 
SCIENCE. 
[N.S. Vou. VI. No. 155. 
educator that neurology is a prime constit- 
uent of a liberal education. Among the 
branches of knowledge essential to a liber- 
ally educated man President Gilman names 
(Educational Review, III., 105-119, Febru- 
ary, 1892), ‘‘first, the knowledge of his 
own physical nature, especially of his think- 
ing apparatus, of the brain and the nervous 
system, by which his intellectual life is car- 
ried forward.” 
Under prevailing conditions, however, 
any approximation to a real and accurate 
knowledge of the brain is gained by but 
few, and at a late educational stage. 
Hence the public are ignorant or misin- 
formed,* and the time that specialists 
might devote to research and advanced in- 
struction is consumed in acquiring and im- 
and containing some errors, it fairly represents what 
was said. 
1896, b.—At the meeting of the New York State 
Science Teachers’ Association in Buffalo, December 
31, 1896, in the discussion on Biology in the Schools, 
the main points of the article above named were 
briefly stated; they were correctly reported in 
SCIENCE, April 2, 1897, p. 537. 
1897.—A paper on ‘The practical study of the 
brain in a primary school’ was read before the Uni- 
versity Convocation, June 29, 1897. 
*Among the anxious parents and teachers to whom 
they are addressed how many are able to profit by 
the information contained in, for example, Donald- 
son’s ‘ The growth of the brain’ and Halleck’s ‘The 
education of the central nervous system ?? How many 
persons recognize as erroneous the statements so fre- 
quently made as to the supreme absolute or relative 
size of the human brain? May not high school pupils 
describe the rivers of Africa and even the ‘ canals’ of 
Mars and yet beso little familiar with the topography 
of the cerebrum as to accept without question the al- 
leged representations thereof in most text-books, mis- 
representations that might serve equally well fora 
heap of sausages? A large part of the community is 
at the mercy of charlatans, and squanders time and 
money upon that peculiarly American humbug, phre- 
nology as practised. In a recent issue of a popular 
magazine, whose editor is sincerely interested in edu- 
cation, is an article containing not merely the phreno- 
logic misstatements and vapidities, but a diagram of 
the ‘ convolutions of the brain’ which has no basis of 
fact. : 
