The Oregon daily journal., June 14, 1908, Page 27, Image 27

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PORTLAND, . OREGON, ; SUNDAY HORNING,, 'JUNE 14, ; J903 -. '
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I'mpeat.
German
Research Now Going On
Expected to Explain Many
Mysteries.
N ALL the researches of patient sci
ence there is none today, more inter
esting or more promising of startling
results than the study of the human brain. ,
Suppose that you, civilized, Anglo
Saxon, were to do xvha't many thousands of
; your kind have done before you-wander
of, like Kipling's Man Who Was a King,
or like Kim's vanished Celtic' father, and
were to lose yourself amid the hordes of a
lesser race. ,
And suppose ' among those Papuans,
or Zulus, or Andamanese you were to per- '
ish again as thousands of your kind have
done. .'..' . - -.
Would you succeed in, obliterating all
trace of your, superiority to" the savages
arouna you. even inourn your, wnne ooay , th rt-hTA fianwisiftn.
were cast into the sea and the fishes o tt Papuan vanishes as a type for comparison, the
had parted bone from bone? . proud Caucasian finds small superiority" on
Jot so Ion r as the new science of the wpmuw ub twuhj.;
- -d , " : :
study of Jhe brain could find, intact in the
skull, the two lobes which, inherited from
the long generations of your forefathers,
gave birth to every thought- and directed
every action. -' ;.. v
With the skull gone, with nothing to
analyze but that handful of convoluted
matter, graf and white, the science which
reached its development into accuracy with
Dr. Edward Anthony Spitzka's "Study of
the Brains of Six Eminent Scientists and
Scholars" would still have been able to de?
dare: .
"This man was neither Papuan nor
'Andamanese. He was made to think and
know and live upon a. scale such as those
primitive aborigines can never hope to at-
" tain. He was probably a white man,' skilled
as clerk, or mechanic, fit to vote and par
ticipate in the guidance of a mighty nation;
fit to live on terms of absolute political
equality with the leaders of the civilized
world. , -' , . -
Drdoof
Papuao
0ns foots
sJQrottao Commerce
' Nearest-Zero tb'tA
-A
zzA , j - V lli I' , Jr
'
f ;
:
trary opinions preconceived by himself as well
as by others.;
And the mute evidence of the dead brains
has been proved, to speak more fully and truly
to the eye of science than the living men 'were
able to speak to the untrained gaze of scores of
superficial observers. ..
-The Ebkimos and the" Andamanese, so long
believed to be of a hopelessly inferior -race, have
been compared with the Papuans as well as with
the trreat-brained Caucasian. And, while the
In the - East Indies; on the island : of New
Guinea, dwell the Papuans, long notorious as
implacable headhunters, always relegated to the '
lowest level of human intelligence relegated to
a level so low that anthropology appraised them
very highly as being one of the nearest survivals
showing, in brutish instincts and lack of mental
force, man's kinship with-the primal ape.
In the Indian ocean, off the coast of Bur
mah, lie the Andaman islandsthe North, Hid '
die and South Andamans whose aborigines, not
so well known to science, were famed as being
upon a scale even lower than that of the bestial
Papuans. - ,
DWARFS SEEMED LIKE SIMIANS
STUDY of the I rain, so recent and yet so
advanced, has gone now even farther in
its, marvelous insight.,, ', - ;
Professor Spitzka, with the brains
of . Andamanese and Eskimos, : Papuans and
Zulus, has fiied the; intellectual status of their
owners with acsur$d positiveness on the evi
deace df ithe brain alone, and in defiance of con-
. Dwarfs in body as well as mind, they were
reputed to promise impressive proof of the
nearness ' of . man's simian progenitors proof
even more convincing than that afforded by the
; tradi-Honal Papuan. - . -
' Afar in the frozen North, in Greenland
and in Labrador, dwell " the Eskimos, until re
"cently sealed almost hermetically from rela
tions with their species, and until recently be-?
lieved t9.be among the most limited, mentally,
of all races making pretense to the intelligence -;
'of, man. "' ,;v 'y.j . .
When, in making the original report of his ;
studies of the human brain. Professor Spitzka
; presented his observations upon the brain of
the Papuan in comparison with the, brains of
-average and, distinguished. Caucasians, the re
sults of the new science of the brain had no new
evidence to adduce in denial of the facts known
to anthropology. f ';--s';,'-e:'','i :i:X'-ir V'-- v;'
The older science had done its work thor
oughly, and the faintly markel organ recorded, -.
with the fidelity of
a relief map, the
scant mental activ-
. ities of a race
whose homes are
tree shelters as
1 rude as those of
prehistoric Pithe
c a n thropus, and
whose social amen
ities are raw mur-
der and rank can-
' nibalism. P i t h e
canthrbpus inter
vened somewhere
between the Papu- . ' .
an and the gorilla. '
"The world had idea," said Professor
Spitzka, in his laboratop, recently, . "that the
Andamane&e were a wholly primitive and sav
age race, so long isolated from the progressive
branches of the human species that they have
remained absolutely: uncultured, and uncouth.
"Such few skulls ; as 'reached- museums
showed small -capacity, ' apparently about 1250
centimeters, av compared with the brain of the
average white man, which weighs 1500 on the
average." Professor Spitzka had been studying
the brain of an Andaman islander, the only one,
so far as known, to be presented for the -investigation
of modern science. '
The Andamanese were ; supposed to be
more or .less of the - simian type. There were,
indeed, certain skeletal features whicl- went far
to bear out the popular' impression.
1 "The skull, for -example, waa small, round
and notable for prominent jaw. It was the chief
distinction of the Andamanese that tho broad
but small skull was associated with dwarf
stature. There was another suggestion of the
ape in the relation between the lumbar, or small
of the back .in the region of the kidneys, and
the rest of the vertebral column. :
"Nevertheless, although the' brain is small,'
some forty-four ounces, as compared with the
A Afabvr of tie Amtimao tesnrfs
centimeters, against the 1500 of the white'; and
the average Andamanese brain weight . is be
tween 1125 and 1150 grammes, which does not
depart much from what the white brain, would
be in proportion to the white body weight. Then,
too, certain features of the brain of this'-native
of the Andaman islands indicate a good share of
manual skill, of dexterity in fashioning imple
ments, and, possibly, more or less artistic en
dowment,". Latest accounts of the Andamanese, espe
cially the narrative of C. Boden Kloss, whioh
describes in detail the cruise of the ship Terra-
in in the neighborhood of the Andaman and
icobar islands, amply corroborate the deduc
tions made by Professor Spitzka from the dead
yet speaking brain.
. " The Andamanese live in well-thatched huts,
: manufacture r their own .weapons of war and
hunting, weave baskets and nets, make canoes
nd possess a language that has rathe an in
tricate grammar. They are potters in a tude
way, poets in a rude way, artists in a rude way. -Their
children are susceptible to' education
-as susceptible as white children up to a cer
tain stage; but there the budding intelligence
'stops. ' '"' ;v '"'
! :r Tat, strange to say, in their social relations.
white brain of forty-nine or fifty ounces, . it while they have, no morals to speak of, de An
was important to note that the stature ia dwarf-
ed and the body weight small."; The Andamanese
brain is not out of proportion to the body, even
when judged by the standards of the white man.
, "The cranial capacity of the Andamanese
specimen I .examined proved to be-1260 cubio
Amanese Lave evolved, from their brain canao-
ity for practical . affairs, customs which many
individuals of , the proudest civilizations might
well emulate. , , -
v Children are tenderly cared for and the
aged are shown the utmost "attention and re
spect, while "woman, who remains still a mere ,
child-bearer and beast of burden in not a few
communities reckoned civilized, finds her5 labors
helpfully and willingly shared by the Andaman- )
ese man.
It would seem as though the study of the
brain had arrived, at last, at. that marvelous
stage which, years ago, was reached by another
' science, where zoology, given the fragment of a
bone, was able to reconstruct the whole vanished
creature, even to the hair that covered it and
the habitat in , which it raged.
a In the hands of an exponent so versed- as, s
Spitzka, given the brain of a man, and the life
for which he is fitted whether it be an ape-like
flitting through, the forest or the ordering of -an
encyclopedia can be sketched as though t Da
Chaillu had hunted with his tribe or a Eoswell
written his biography. -
As with the Andamanese, -so with -the -CEaki
.. mos. ?:
'Tor a long time," remarked Professor
Spitzka, "the Eskimos were regarded as a low,
" degraded race savage, uncouth, bereft of
morals. ... I have 'no patience with". writers who
still persist in calumniating them. I' prefer to
consider them a quick-witted, capable race, ex
hibiting remarkable aptitudes and, in general,
possessing considerable intellectual power. ,
"The whole brain, contrary to preconceived
notions, is large and finely constructed. Tho
brain -of Kishu, chief of his tribe,- brought to
. New York some years ago-by Lieutenant Peary, I
is of a kind that, any leader of men,, or. ,anyj
nhilosonher. michtb nroud to tiorsprs- , J
RACES-ARE BLENDING
"A mixture-of' Eskimo andwhiter blood i
constantly going on in the various camps, and
fhis absorption of the race- may-ventually be aj
the white pioneer settlers can be. improved, by,
the addition of the patience,, gentleness, devo
tion, honesty -and skill so characteristic -of the
Eskimo." . ..- " . : " J,.;
But how does the scientist youask, pene
trate the mystery of the brain-Sphinx; how does
he unravel the bewildering tangle of nerve fibers
and interpret the mysterious hieroglyphics of
the fissures and convolutions! . . ,
"What ia the - method pursued hy . which'
nature is made to reveal her most mysterious
and most cherished x)f secrets! How are human
brains studied! ; j-'?;
Whit it ih AfTarO-nUi Vafraon I tli. V..!.
of the smallest animals and man, the differentia- (
tion between men. of great intellectual powers t
and ordinary people! "What marks the brain I
of genius from the brain of a fool! , .
Beginning with the time the brain soft and
gblatinous, is taken from the head of the dead,j
the -study begins. 1 "One- can make a superficial !
studjk in three months, - declared Dr. Spitzka,
"andifcan continue study indefinitely through-;
; out a lifetime. f-';l-' ?. '' - ;
' Were you to ' visit the laboratory of Dr.
Spitzka, at Jefferson College, Philadelphia, you
would see large glass jars, filled with a trans-(
parent liquid, ; containing brains of various
sizes, lying on wads of cotton. r ; . i
There are brains of gorillas, apes,-cats and j
unborn1 children. Por, mark you, the study of
' the "human brain, does not begin with that of
' man,1 but with.' that of the lamprey; and tLe ;
' statu? of a great man is-of ten gauged by a com- ,
parison of his brain with thai of a Papuan or
' gorilla. " "' :
In those glass jars lie secrets as baEicj as
"those of the ancient Sphinx, verily tha sccrtui
y f I (CONTINUED ON. INSIDB TACS-I ,.