The American Woman's Curiosity

1910

"The American woman's intellectual characteristic is curiosity. One feels she would like to have ten pairs of eyes so as to see everything, ten pairs of ears so as to hear everything. . . .

"When I sit down at table beside an American woman of Paris, she immediately asks me: "Have you seen such and such a play? Have you been to such and such an art exhibition? What do you think of this novel or of that philosophical or historical book recently published?' . . . And I am forced to admit that I have not seen the latest play, that for more than ten years I have not set my foot inside the annual 'salons,' that I read slowly and carefully, and am therefore forced to read but few books. And I know my American neighbor feels great disdain for my inculture. . . .

"Still I have infinite sympathy for her charming and universal intellectual curiosity; only long experience has taught me that man's head cannot contain too many ideas at once." — Marcel Prevost in Harper's Bazar.


Teach Them to Know Home City

The Buffalo board of education is considering a proposition to introduce in the public schools a textbook on Buffalo which will give pupils some knowledge of the industries and institutions of the city in which they live.

The Smallest Human Brain

1908

Proof That Size of Organ Does Not Measure Intellect

What is believed to be the smallest brain ever found in a normal human being was revealed as a result of autopsy performed at the New York city morgue upon the body of Daniel Lyons, a watchman, employed in the Pennsylvania tunnel excavation.

Lyons became ill suddenly while at work, and, having had no medical attendance, his death came technically under the investigation of the coroner, Dr. Philip O'Hanlon, who, with Prof. John E. Larkin, of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, made the autopsy, found that the brain of Lyons weighed only 24 ounces, although the normal weight of the human cerebrum is from 48 to 50 ounces.

Lyons was 40 years of age, five feet five inches in height and weighed 140 pounds. Those who had known him for many years testified that he was of average intelligence. The cause of the man's death was inflammation of the kidneys. The man's brain seemed in every way normal except as to size.

"It is one of the most remarkable brains I have ever seen," said Dr. O'Hanlon, who has made thousands of autopsies, "and it shows that the size of the brain does not necessarily measure the intellect of man. Lyons was, from all that I can learn, intelligent and capable. The quality of the brain, and not the size of it, counts. One of the smallest brains known to anatomists was that of Gambetta, at one time president of France, and a brilliant and forceful thinker."

Comparative tables of the weights of human brains bear out the idea of Dr. O'Hanlon that there is little connection between the weight of the brain and the power of the intellect.