Alexander Macalister

“ One of the oldest of this large family of predictive systems is that of palmistry, whereby the various irregularities and flexion-folds of the skin of the hand are interpreted as being associated with mental or moral dispositions and powers, as well as with the current of future events in the life of the individual. How far back in prehistoric times this system has been practised it is impossible to say, but in China it is said to have existed 3000 years before Christ, [1] and in Greek literature it is treated even in the most ancient writings as well-known belief. ”

“ Artificial malformations alter the apparent skull shape considerably while they affect the relative development of the parts of the brain cortex but little. All these and other cogent reasons of a like kind, whose force can be estimated by those accustomed to deal with the component soft parts of the head, should lead phrenologists to be careful in predicating relative brain-development from skull-shape. Psychology, physiology and experience alike contribute to discredit the practical working of the system and to show how worthless the so-called diagnoses of character really are. ”

“ Gall himself believed that there was but a single principle which saw, felt, tasted, heard, touched, thought and willed (Fonctions du cerveau, i. 243) ; and the American exponent of phrenology, Caldwell, says “the mind is as single in its power as it is in its substance; it is a quickening and operating principle, essential to all the mental faculties, but does not, by any means, possess them itself” (Elements, p. 16) . It is not easy to understand the supposed relation of this hypothetical substratum to the separate faculties acting on it. ”

“ Gall is the only writer of his creed in whose works original observations of value are to be found, and Dr B. Holländer has cited many interesting and carefully recorded anatomical and clinical facts in his writings. Although the study of the surface of the cerebrum is of the essence of phrenology, yet nowhere in the circle of phrenological literature are the convolutions of the brain accurately described; our knowledge of their order and disposition comes from the morphologist, not from the phrenologist. ”

“ He deprecates the craniology of Gall, as far as it deals with mere “bumps,” and honours him, with justice, as the recorder of many facts worth saving out of the wreck of his system; and he endeavours, though with doubtful success, to establish an unbroken connexion between phrenology, in the Greek sense, and our present knowledge of cerebral localization.
The substance of Holländer's first work is of two kinds. The one kind is a tabulated statement of many hundred cases of different forms of mania, with injury or disease limited to one portion of the brain ”

“ A. B. Bonnet long ago believed each portion of the brain to have a specifically separate function, and Herbert Spencer has said that “no physiologist can long resist the conviction that different parts of the cerebrum subserve different kinds of mental action. Localization of function is the law of all organization; separateness of duty is universally accompanied with separateness of structure, and it would be marvellous were an exception to exist in the cerebral hemispheres. Let it be granted that the cerebral hemispheres are the seats of the higher psychical activities ”

“ Modern physiology, from its objective point of view, is engaged over finer and finer issues of microscopic and experimental work; and, from its subjective point of view, is becoming more and more psychological, seeking a higher level of interpretation, and a statement of the departmental life of the brain in terms of ever-increasing complexity. The motor centres, governing the voluntary purposeful movements of the body, are considered to be not simply motor, but “psycho-motor” ”

“ The teaching of anatomy with regard to phrenology may be summarized thus: (1) the rate of growth of brain is concurrent with the rate of development of mental faculty; (2) there is some degree of structural differentiation as there are varying rates of development of different parts of the cerebral surface; (3) there is no accordance between the regions of Gall and Spurzheim and definite areas of cerebral surface. ”

“ The theory of Hippocrates was Pythagorean rather than Aristotelian, for, although in one passage in his work De corde he expresses himself doubtfully, yet elsewhere he clearly states that he considers the brain to be the index and messenger of the intellect. [5] The cerebral seat of sense-perception is also taught by Plato, [6] who puts into the mouth of Socrates the theory that the brain is the organ affected by the senses, whereby memory and opinion arise, and from whence knowledge springs. The classic poets also notice this dependence of mind on brain ”

“ It must be both immaterial and unconnected with the brain, as the whole two thousand million cells supposed to exist in the cerebral hemispheres are all parcelled out among the faculties, and none are left for the unifying nous.
Each organ is considered as engaged, either independently in bringing forth its own product, or collectively with others in elaborating compound mental states, and according to their several degrees of development and activity they are considered capable of perceiving, conceiving, recollecting, judging or imagining each its own subject. ”

“ While our knowledge of the anatomy of the brain, especially of the grey nuclei and of the white bands uniting them, has in recent years become much more accurate (see articles Brain and Muscle and Nerve) , our knowledge of the physiology of the nerve centres is still indefinite and fragmentary, even when the utmost allowance is made for the experimental work of C. S. Sherrington, A. S. F. Grünbaum, F. Goltz and others; and the hypotheses relating to the division of labour in the nerve centres is chiefly based on anatomical structure. ”

“ At birth the brain weighs one-tenth of the weight of the body, and averages about 11 oz. For the first year brain-growth and consequently expansion of the skull proceed with great rapidity, the growth during a large part of this period averaging one cubic centimetre daily. This enormous increase is chiefly due to the rapid development of medullated nerve-fibres, which are deficient in the foetal brain. During the second and third years growth takes place more slowly, the occipital and parietal lobes increasing more than the frontal or temporo-sphenoidal. ”

“ In another work the same author says it is “used to denote a particular power of feeling, thinking, perceiving, connected with a particular part of the brain.” The assumption is contained in the definition that the exercise of a faculty is the physical outcome of the activity of the organ, and in several of the standard works this is illustrated by misleading analogies between these and other organs; thus the organs of benevolence and of firmness are said to be as distinct as the liver and pancreas. The mind, according to another author, consists of the sum of all the faculties. ”

“ Experimental physiology and pathology, by suggesting other functions for parts of the brain-surface, are thus directly subversive of many details of the phrenology of Gall and Spurzheim.
Psychological Aspect.—The fundamental hypothesis which underlies phrenology as a system of mental science is that mental phenomena are resolvable into the manifestations of a group of separate faculties. A faculty is defined as “a convenient expression for the particular states into which the mind enters when influenced by particular organs ”

“ The frontal sinus, that opprobrium phrenologicum, is a reality, not unfrequently of large size, and may wholly occupy the regions of five organs. The centres of ossification of the frontal and parietal bones, the muscular crests of these and of the occipital bones also, differ in their prominence in different skulls. Premature synostoses of sutures mould the brain without doing much injury to its parts. In such cases there are compensatory dilatations in other directions modifying sometimes to an extreme degree the relation of brain-surface to skull-surface. ”

“ We know so little of the trophic action of the higher nerve centres that we cannot say how far tissue nutrition can be controlled in spots. That the nerve centres have a direct influence on local nutrition is, in some cases, capable of experimental demonstration, and, in another sphere, a few of the recorded instances of connexion between maternal impression and congenital deformity seem to indicate that this trophic influence may have wider limits and a more specific capacity of localization than at first sight seems possible. ”

“ The lines of cardinal importance are (1) the rasceta or cross sulci, which isolate the hand from the forearm at the wrist, and which are the flexion folds between the looser forearm skin and that tied down to the fascia above the level of the anterior annular ligament. (2) The line which isolates the ball of the thumb, where the skin ceases to be tied to the front of the palmar fascia, is called the line of life. (3) A line starting above the head of the second metacarpal bone and crossing the hand to the middle of its ulnar border is the line of the head. ”

“ The latter regarded the convoluted surface of the cerebrum as the seat of the memory and the will, the convolutions being intended to retain the animal spirits for the various acts of imagination and memory. Imagination he described as seated in the corpus callosum, sense-perception in the corpus striatum, and impetus et perturbatio in the basal parts of the cerebrum above the crura. The thalami he regarded as the centres of sight and the cerebellum of involuntary acts. Succeeding anatomists simply varied these localizations according to their respective fancies. ”

“ Philoprogenitiveness (Amour de la progéniture) , median, on the squama occipitis, and selected as the organ for the love of children because this part of the skull is usually more prominent in apes and in women, in whom the love of children is supposed to be stronger than in men.
3. Concentrativeness, below the obelion and over the lambda. This is a region of uncertain function, unnoticed by Gall, but described as Inhabitiveness by Spurzheim, because he found it large in cats and in a clergyman fond of his home. ”

“ So much of the psychic work of the individual life consists in the interpretation of sensations and the translation of these into motions that there are strong a priori grounds for expecting to find that much of the material of the nerve-centres is occupied with this kind of work, but in the present conflict of experimental evidence it is safer to suspend judgment. ”

“ It is not so easy to believe that the cerebellum is in any primary way associated with sexual desire: its position, its structure and its proved association with the co-ordination of muscular movements seem clearly to indicate that its work is wholly subordinate and complementary to the work of the cerebral hemispheres ”

“ Thus the Dominican Paula de St Thomas was said to have had the stigmata on her heart. The heart of Clare of Montfaucon (1308) was said to have been as large as a child’s head and impressed with the cross, the scourge and the nails. Similar appearances were found in Margaret of Citta di Capello and Johanna of Yepes (1591) .
The instances of masculine stigmatization are few. Benedict di Rhegio, a Capuchin at Bologna, had the marks of the crown (1602) ; Carolus Sazia, an ignorant lay brother, had the wound in his side. ”

“ It was advanced by Brougham and Jeffrey as against the theory of phrenology; but the doctrine that the brain is the organ of the mind is now universally received. While it is probable that certain molecular changes in the grey matter are antecedents or concomitants of mental phenomena, the precise nature of these processes, to what extent they take place, or how they vary among themselves have not as yet been determined experimentally ”

“ The second kind of cases, where injury or disease limited to one portion of the brain is followed by perversion, exaltation or loss of some special instinct or habit, is more valuable and more convincing ”

“ STIGMATIZATION, the infliction of stigmata, i.e. marks tattooed or branded on the person, the term being used with specific reference to the supposed supernatural infliction of wounds like those of Christ.
An ancient and widespread method of showing tribal connexion, or relation to tribal deities, was by marks set upon the person; thus Herodotus, in describing a temple of Hercules in Egypt (ii. 113) , says that it is not lawful to capture runaway slaves who take refuge therein if they receive certain marks on their bodies, devoting them to the deity. ”

“ In the course of ages every detail has been brought under a formal set of rules, which only need mechanical application. There have been in past times considerable divergences in the practice, but at present there is a fairly uniform system in vogue. One school lays special stress on the general shape and outline of the hand. ”

“ Since the middle of the 19th century, in spite of the enactments of laws in Britain and elsewhere against the practice, there has been a recrudescence of belief in palmistry, and a new literature has grown up differing little in essence from the older. ”

“ The folds are so disposed that the thick skin shall be capable of bending in grasping, while at the same time it requires to be tightly bound down to the skeleton of the hand, else the slipping of the skin would lead to insecurity of pretension, as the quilting or buttoning down of the covers of furniture by upholsterers keeps them from slipping. ”

“ The convoluted arrangement results from growth of brain-surface under constraint, hence as the different tracts of surface undergo proportional overgrowth they may fold along different lines. The occurrence of small differences in the rate of overgrowth, testified to by the varieties of the resulting pattern, can hardly fail to cause considerable alteration in the place of definite territories of grey cells. ”