Considerations on Flechsig's "Gehirn und Seele."

  • Jacobi, Mary Putnam, 1842-1906.
Date:
[1897?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Considerations on Flechsig's "Gehirn und Seele.". Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    finite series of events. The facts of specific quantitative inheritance show that during the process of making new records, thai is during the individual life of the brain, its organic memories, its inherited habits are revived, and these modify the manner of the new recording. The rec- ords are not uniform to the same excitation, but assume specific forms which vary in each individual case. There is no moment in which external impression is not followed by specific reaction. In all this there is no evidence to be found for the local- ization of psychic functions or faculties, but rather for the totality of brain action at any given moment to any given excitation. I think the flimsiness of Flechsig's argumentation de- fends on the futility of his attempt to demonstrate that the brain is the mirror of mind rather than the expression of mind. The attempt has often been made before, but it is interesting to note how each in succession fails. And to this last and brilliant effort in the same direction it has seemed to me eminently worthy to invite the thoughtful criticism of this society. Note,— Criticisms upon Flechsig's conclusions, and their cases, have not been lacking from other points of view than those developed in the preceding considerations. Dejerine (Soc. de Biol., Feb. 20, 1897) protests vehem- ently against Flechsig's view that only a third of the cerebral cortex is provided with projection fibres, the other two-thirds serving only to associate together the sensorial spheres, and the sensory-motor sphere.'' This view rests upon the study of the brains of new-born chil- dren, or of those younger than five months: it is in ab- solute contradiction with the teachings of normal anat- omy and the study of secondary degeneration. All the cerebral cortex contains projection fibres, including, prob- ably, the insula. It is very possible that the infantile brains studied by Flechsig were deprived of projection