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.

Man Sleeping By Tracks Declared Dead

Middletown, New York, 1914

"CHRISTY" WASN'T DEAD

But Everybody Thought He Was, and He Just Missed the Morgue

Christy Fisher, a well known resident of this city, felt tired this afternoon, and lay down alongside the Erie tracks and went to sleep. A little girl saw him and told her mother. The latter investigated and decided the man was dead. She notified police headquarters. Motorcycle Policeman Dopson investigated, and also pronounced the man dead.

Chief of Police McCoach, Coroner Harding, and an undertaker were called and the coroner was about to hold an inquest preparatory to taking the man to the morgue when Fisher opened his eyes and wanted to know "what in thunder was going on." He was informed that he was dead at which he scrambled to his feet and ran down the tracks, narrowly escaping being hit by a train as he got away. — Dispatch to New York Times.