Capacity of the Brain

1906

By Dr. Frederick Peterson

Authorities differ as to the capacity of the average brain to receive the impressions of a lifetime. It is pretty well believed that there is in the brain a centre of conservation distinct from the centre of perception. We of course know nothing as to the nature of the relation of brain cells to percepts and conservation, but we do know that there must be a relation. The latest researches (Hammerberg and Thomson) show that the number of cells in the brain is nine billion two hundred million. All stimuli, external (through the five senses) or internal (through processes), must leave some trace upon these cells, chemical, physical, or dynamic. These stimuli are composed of all sorts of percepts; words and sounds heard; things and words seen; objects felt, tasted, smelled; sensations perceived in our own bodies; thoughts pushing upward into consciousness. And a little reflection will show how innumerable such imprints must be in the course of a single waking day.

Even without reading the resident of a city must receive an incalculable number of impressions upon his brain every 24 hours. The reading centre of the brain occupies a comparative small area in the back of the left hemisphere, and consequently must possess a very small portion of the nine billion cells referred to above. We can only guess at the number, but a fair estimate would be about a twentieth, or say five hundred millions which in a lifetime of 60 years would allow us about 25,000 cells daily for the perception and conservation of words and sentences read. These figures may have no scientific value, but at any rate they emphasize a very important fact, and that is that our brain capacity is limited and that we should be sparing of the cells we daily squander. — Colliers' Weekly.

Italian Doctor Said to Have Remedy for Cancer

1912

HE CURES CANCER

Italian Doctor Said to Have Remedy For Malignant Disease, Fifteen Patients Healed

By the United Press Associations.

Chicago, Ill., Dec. 17.—After working day and night under the shadow of Hull house, in the heart of Chicago's Italian quarter, Dr. Joseph D. Stevano, an Italian, says he has perfected a cure for malignant cancer.

The cure is vouched for by Dr. A. A. Whamond, president of the Robert Burns hospital. Dr. Whamond said today that in his hospital and in homes fifteen persons who have been declared incurable and too far advanced for operation had been cured. The cancer wounds have healed, he says, and every sympton of the disease has disappeared.

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, December 17, 1912, page 1.

London Man Thinks Cancer Cure is Near

1912

London, July 6. — "I have not discovered a cure for cancer, but I think I have got very near it," was the announcement made by Dr. F. W. Forbes Ross, whose pain killing discovery was made public recently.

"I am convinced that the cure, when found, will be very simple. As far as my investigation has gone I have come to the conclusion that the cause of cancer has no connection with meat or vegetable diet; neither is it an irritation of parts of a back infection.

"My theory is that cancer cells are really 'Peter Pans' that will not grow old. If we could make them grow old we could cure the disease, because we should stop the multiplication of cells and they would absorbed.

"What I claim to have discovered is that cancer is nothing more or less than an exhaustion of natural quality in a body, possessed by epithelial cells, consequent upon diminution in the body of potassium salts."

—Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, July 7, 1912, page 2.