Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/279

Rh ticket her as accurately as though she were to appear with ear-rings and train in a ball-room. Now, if all this is true, it would surely be the easiest and simplest thing in the world to determine the sex of a subject by an examination of the brain alone. And if these "great and numerous differences" are natural, potential sex conditions, and not the results of difference in education, occupation, mental stimulus, and general environment, they would be as easily distinguished in the brains of infants (of the same age, size, and condition) as in the brains of adults.

The physical sex differences which we all know to be natural, necessary, and inevitable, are as easily distinguishable at birth as in maturity.

Now, I am assured by all of the brain experts and scientists to whom my questions were submitted, that the sex of two infants not only could not be "perceived at once," but could not be determined at all by these certainly sufficiently plain and numerous differences in brain size, matter, and condition of which the doctor writes so confidently.

And, further than this, I am assured by the leading brain anatomist in America that no careful scientific observer could risk more than a mere guess as to the sex of adult brains, even upon the most careful and exhaustive examination.

And even more than this, it is a well-known fact that individual brain differences between persons of the same sex are greater and more numerous than any known to exist between the sexes, and that such a guess would, therefore, be worth very little to a scientific mind.

The difference in weight, for example, between the brains of Cromwell and Gambetta, or Byron and Dante, are absolutely known to be far greater than any known to exist between the sexes, as such, even in spite of the relative lighter body-weight of women. But if Dr. Hammond still believes in these numerous and easily detected sex differences in the brain-mass itself—even including the weight test—I am prepared to offer him an opportunity to prove his case, very greatly advance scientific knowledge, and win for himself fame as an original discoverer in a disputed field. If the doctor will agree to it, we can decide whether he can distinguish sex in brain by a very simple experiment.

I will agree to furnish (by permission of the leading brain anatomists and from their collections) twenty well-preserved brains, marked in cipher, Dr. Hammond to divide the male from the female brains by applying any or all of his numerous and readily perceivable sex tests. If he can not do this, he has certainly lost his case.

In the matter of weight the doctor concedes that the relative size and weight of the brain are about the same in the two sexes—slightly in woman's favor—which he says does not count; although, when he finds this same relative difference between two men, he argues that it does count for a great deal. But in the dilemma to which this seemed to reduce him he rushes into a most extraordinary statement. He says: "Numerous observations show, beyond doubt, that the intellectual power does not depend upon the weight of brain relative to that of the body, so much as it does upon absolute brain-weight." Now, if this were true, an elephant might out-think any of us; and the whale, whose intellectual achievements have never been looked upon as absolutely incendiary (if we except Jonah's friend), would rank the greatest man on record, and have brains enough left to equip a fair-sized female seminary.

The average human male brain weighs from 1,300 to 1,400 grammes, and even a very young whale furnishes 2,312 grammes of "intellect-producing substance," as the doctor felicitously terms it; while the brain of a large whale weighed in 1883 tipped the beam at 6,700 grammes!

Truly, then, if absolute brain-weight, and not relative weight, is to be the test, here was a "mute, inglorious Milton" indeed!

Almost any elephant which disports itself for the amusement of small boys—and the enrichment of Mr. Barnum—is several Cuviers in disguise, or perhaps an entire medical faculty.

So much for the "absolute-weight" statement. There are nineteen other points in the doctor's two articles upon which I have data of a nature as radically opposed to his theories and statements as these; but, since lack of space forbids their introduction here, I can add only one other sample. He says," A fact which is somewhat astonishing to those not aware of it is, that the head of a boy or girl does not grow in size after the seventh year." There is no sort of doubt about that being "somewhat astonishing," but there is a vast deal of doubt about it being a "fact." It does not require a "brain-expert" or anatomist to decide that point. Any hatter knows that it is absolutely incorrect. But lest the whole hatting fraternity be not looked upon as an offset to Dr. Hammond's authority, I have permission to state that one of the leading—and I think I will not exaggerate if I say the foremost—brain anatomist of New York has taken such measurements for many years, and in his own family there is a boy whose head has increased in size steadily up to his eleventh year, and still offers abundant evidence of its future intentions in the same direction. This, he assures me, is not exceptional, but is the usual and normal condition.