Moses Allen Starr

“ The actual area is always extending, the potential area is diminishing, as we acquire new facts. The wider and more varied our knowledge, the greater the actual area of any one memory, and the more complete our command over our inherent brain-power. ”

“ IF you examine the brain of a dog, or an ape, or a man, you will see that it is made up of two kinds of substance, gray and white. The gray substance, which is formed of round bodies of nervous matter called nerve-cells, is spread out in a thin layer over the entire surface of the brain. The white substance constitutes the center and body of the organ, and consists of white threads or nerve-fibers which pass in various directions through the brain and end in the cells of the gray matter. It is the office of the white fibers to convey messages ”

“ But the sight of other dogs, or of men, whom he used to recognize with signs of pleasure or dislike, no longer affects him at all. However hungry or thirsty he may be, he no longer looks for his food and water in their usual places, and when they are put before him he does not seem to know them as food and water until his nose is put into them, when he recognizes them by other senses than sight. The sight of the whip, which used to make him run into a corner, does not frighten him any more, though he jumps when he hears it snap. ”

“ Suppose the organ to be destroyed. It is evident that the part of the brain with which it is joined is no longer called into action; it is no longer used, and the result is that it withers. If from a new-born animal you remove an eye, the tract to the posterior part of the brain and that part of the brain will never be called into use, and hence they never develop to a normal size. If a child is born blind, or loses his sight in infancy, the same is true; so that, when in old ago he dies, the posterior part of his brain will be found small and shrunken. ”

“ Disease may be regarded as an experiment of Nature to satisfy both physiologists and psychologists, and its results are the more satisfactory, since man is an animal who can describe his sensations during the experiment, as no other animal can. The nature and value of the evidence for the localization of memories to be derived from the study of disease will be clear after the blood-supply of the brain in man is understood. ”

“ Every artery divides and subdivides as it passes outward from the great central artery of the body—the aorta—so that the vascular system may be likened to a tree, with trunk, boughs, branches, and twigs. Each terminal division of an artery supplies with blood a little cone-shaped mass of brain, the base of the cone being the gray surface of the brain, and its apex being the point of entrance of the little artery. ”

“ It is no less true that an organ which is not used withers away. If one carries his arm in a sling for several weeks, it grows thin. Now, a sensory organ, like the eye, is simply a mechanism for the reception and transmission to its corresponding part of the brain of appropriate impulses. ”

“ A fourth acquires languages readily. So each of us has a stronger and a weaker kind of memory, and it is important to recognize this, in order to train and educate the weaker memory up to the level of the stronger one. The memories which we possess are our actual memories. But around these are areas of gray matter still unoccupied by memory-pictures, and in these potential areas new memories can be stored up. ”

“ In the brain the terminal branches of the arteries do not run into each other, as in some organs, so that each little cone, like the leaf on the tree, is independent of adjacent cones and hangs upon its own arterial twig. Now, it is evident that anything which plugs up the artery is going to cut off the blood, and therefore the nutriment from the little cone of brain, and then the little cone will wither and die. ”

“ It is also a mistake to give memory as a whole a location in one place as the phrenologists do. Our various memories are scattered over the brain in different regions, being distributed at the time of the perception of the sensation remembered in accordance with the anatomical connection of the percipient organ. It is, finally, a mistake to speak of a good memory or a bad memory. The degree of power to remember differs in our various kinds of memory. One man can remember things seen ”

“ Therefore, an irritation set up in any organ of the body is always transmitted to that part of the brain with which the organ is joined, and can not reach any other part directly, although it may do so indirectly, by means of association fibers which join the different regions with one another. ”

“ All the posterior part of the brain in the dog is, therefore, a potential area for sight-memories. The actual area of sight-memories occupies only a part of the potential area. If the actual area is cut out, but a part of the potential area remains, the dog is temporarily deprived of sight-memory, but can recover. ”

“ We will pass by a paralysis of the muscles of the throat or tongue, which would, of course, prevent your speaking, and consider the process of setting in action the voluntary centers which govern speech. You have learned to speak by repeated efforts, at first with imperfect success, later witb proper regulation of the tone and effort necessary ”

“ The following instance shows that pathology supports anatomy and physiology, and that the localization of functions and memories is no longer a matter of question among scientists:
Not long ago a man was brought into Bellevue Hospital, in this city, suffering from fever, headache, delirium, and stupor, which had developed after a blow upon the head. ”