October 30, 1885.1 



SCIENCE. 



379 



Hall and Prof. J. S. Newberry, members of the 

 original committee wliicli suggested the congress ; 

 Prof. H. S. Williams, and Prof. Persifor Frazer, 

 who were elected by the American association for 

 the advancement of science at its Ann Arbor 

 meeting. These four constituted the American 

 committee selected by the A. A. A. S. Besides 

 these, Prof, Brush Avas elected by this committee 

 under the powers vested in it. Mr. J. F. Kemp 

 (asst. to Prof. Newberry), Mr. H. B. Patton (stu- 

 dent;, and Mr. H. E. Miller (chemist), from Amer- 

 ica, also appeared on the roll of the congress. IMr. 

 McGee, representing Major Powell and the U. S. 

 geological survey, arrived after the session had 

 commenced. 



In all, 255 members were in attendance, of 

 which 163 were from Germany, and the rest 

 mainly divided between Italy (18), Austria-Hun- 

 gary (16), Great Britain (11), France (10), United 

 States (9), and Belgium and Russia (6 each). 



A detailed report of the committee, giving the 

 debates in part, has already been completed. 



LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTIONS IN THE 

 BRAIN. 



Happy those who in the rapid revolutioniziag of 

 brain-physiology, which the last few years have 

 brought about, have kept abreast of the current. 

 For the new pubhcations are so minute and rapid 

 that, once left behind, there is no hope of catching 

 up. The vivisectional results of Goltz, Ferrier, 

 MurLk, Luciani, and a host of others, with the 

 rather rough polemics which have characterized 

 the German writings on the subject, must have 

 given to many the impression of an almost desper- 

 ate field where no two experimenters could agree 

 as to the facts, and no one, not himself an experi- 

 menter, could critically judge of the relative 

 merits of the investigations published. The re- 

 searches of Munk in particular, professor at the 

 veterinary school in Berhn, seemed to be on such 

 a vast scale, had such an imposing clearness, were 

 set forth with such an air of uberlegenheit over 

 all comers, and above aU presented such an exact 

 correspondence of facts with theoretical require- 

 ments, that it was hard to know just what to 

 tliink of them. Everyone's else researches sounded 

 clumsy and immature in comparison. And yet 

 their very absoluteness awakened suspicion. Munk 

 seemed too clever, his neatness more French than 

 German. Nature does not often yield so exactly 

 balanced a sheet of accounts with our laboratories, 

 especially those of physiology. Results are apt to 

 be more conflicting, and vary more from one 



Zur physiologie des gehirns. By Arthur Christiani. 

 Berlin, Enslin, ls85. lO-firS p , 2 pi. 8°. 



versuehsthier to another. And so in sj^ite of 

 Munk's apparent superiority, many lookers-on 

 have secretly felt as if the ruder style of Goltz 

 and others, and their vaguer conclusions, would 

 prove to be more in the line of final truth. 



Professor Christiani's little book strongly helps 

 to corroborate this view. Munk is a strict localizer 

 of functions. By his extirpations in dog's brains 

 he thought he had mapped out the exact part of 

 each occipital lobe which presides over the sensi- 

 bility of each part of the retinal surface. He said 

 that blindness, sensorial and intellectual, total and 

 irreparable, follows complete ablation of these 

 lobes ; and when Herr Christiani in one of the 

 memoirs repubhshed in this volume, announced 

 his observation that rabbits from which the 

 cerebral hemispheres were entu-ely removed, 

 would, nevertheless, steer clear of obstacles in 

 their path as they loped about the room, Munk 

 came down upon him with a tone so much 

 resembling divine retribution that all bystanders 

 must have thought it impossible for the younger 

 investigator ever to show his face again. But this 

 was reckoning without the resources of experi- 

 mental physiology. Professor Christiani comes 

 up smiling in the pages before us, and, we think, 

 shows himself decidedly the better man of the two. 

 Not only does it appear from Munk's subsequent 

 confession that his first would-be repetitions of 

 Christiani's experiments on rabbits were inju- 

 diciously performed, but we think we also see a 

 decided obstinacy and lack of candor in Herr 

 Munk's refusal to admit the injudiciousness. As 

 weU as a mere reader can judge, Christiani seems 

 to have really proved that the avoidance of 

 obstacles during locomotion is in rabbits a func- 

 tion which may be performed by the aid of visual 

 centres below the hemispheres of the brain ; in 

 other words, that his rabbits were not reaUy bhnd. 



The latter half of the book is occupied by an his- 

 torical survey of the localization of the function 

 of vision, a survey of which the evident purpose is 

 to show by a cumulation of evidence, how one- 

 sided Herr Munk's observations, and how absolute 

 his inferences, have been. This survey is to be 

 recommended to all who would like to review 

 this interesting chaiDter of physiology. It leaves 

 naught to be desired in the way of learning, and 

 its polemic tone is courteous. It shows an amount 

 of evidence against any exclusive connection of 

 vision with the occipital lobes, which, to our 

 mind, is quite overwhelming when brought to- 

 gether in this way. It suggests, as Goltz does, 

 that much of the blindness resulting from lesion of 

 the occipital lobes may be due to an interference 

 with lower visual centres spreading from the u-ri- 

 tation of the wound. But, though breaking down 



