Mind, Brain and Adaptation in the Nineteenth
Century: Cerebral Localization and Its Biological Context from Gall to Ferrier
by
[ Contents | Preface | Introduction |
Chapter: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Bibliography ]
8
DAVID FERRIER: LOCALIZATION OF
SENSORY-MOTOR PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY
On the whole, then, it seems impossible to allow that Dr. Ferrier has done
more than take a first step towards discovering the relation of different parts
in the brain; nor is it possible to say thus far that much psychological insight
is likely to be gained upon the new line of inquiry. Certainly, although he
gives us in chapter xi a view of 'the hemispheres considered psychologically'
which is much above the level of common physiological opinion, it does not
appear to depend specially upon his own investigations. And that we are now put
in the way to obtain a truly scientific phrenology, embodying what was true in
the old phrenological doctrine (the notion of definite organ for definite
function) but based, as that was not, upon exact anatomical and physiological
inquiry in relation to exact psychological analysis-this, which is becoming a
fond conviction with many, is, to say the least, a very premature hope. In some
respects, the old phrenology was itself more scientific than that which would
now be substituted for it.
George C. Robertson, 1877.
Unless our laboratory results are to give us artificialities, mere scientific
curiosities, they must be subjected to interpretation by gradual reapproximation
to conditions of life.
John Dewey, 1900.
Ferrier's Localizations
It took time to persuade the critics of the validity of Fritsch and Hitzig's
findings. Tests were conducted throughout the 1870's, and commissions consisting
of noted physiologists reported favourably from New York, Boston, and Italy.[1]
New objections by Burden-Sanderson in England were overcome by a French exponent
of the new physiology, François-Franck.[2] The literature on cerebral
localization after 1873 became so extensive that contemporary reviewers listed
hundreds of references and made no pretence of providing exhaustive reports.[3]
0nce the principle of cerebral localization was established, it provided a
paradigm within which searching for centres became, and to a large extent has
remained, a part of normal science.[4] Unlike
1 Jefferson, 1960, p. 127.
2 Ibid., pp. 127-8.
3 Dodds, 1878; Bastian, 1880; Mills 1890; Ferrier, 1890; Bateman, 1890; and
Foster, 1890 (Part III), provide extremely useful contemporary reviews. Cf.
Jefferson, 1960.
4 Cf. Kuhn, 1962.
235
many important discoveries in science, the appreciation and exploitation of
Fritsch and Hitzig's findings, were in no way delayed. Almost without exception
the articles and texts which appeared in the 1870's, 80's, and 90's convey the
atmosphere of 'electric excitement' engendered by their discovery.
A great deal of classical work on the cerebral hemispheres followed in the
next few years, and centres for various functions were mapped by workers in
Germany, France, Italy, and especially England. The principal figures supporting
localization in this period were Hitzig, Munk, François-Frank, Luciani, Beevor,
Schafer, Horsley, and David Ferrier. New and more precise techniques of
stimulation and ablation developed apace and were used to extend the initial
findings on motor functions, and to discover cerebral areas related to
sensation. Johannes Mueller's doctrine of specific nerve energies (which related
to specific senses in the peripheral nervous system) was extended to the brain,
and centres for vision, hearing, touch, olfaction, and taste, were more or less
established over the next two decades, although the centres for taste and smell
remained uncertain, and there was considerable debate over particular sensory
centres between the two principal contributors to these developments-Ferrier and
Munk. Ferrier had mentioned the possibility of localizing sensory centres in his
first papers[1] and the first edition of his book had a thirty page section on
the topic. Ten years later the second edition had a section almost three times
as long.[2]
The work of these investigators was informed by the growing appreciation of
the implications of the theory of evolution. Thus, one finds them taking
comparative anatomy quite as seriously as Gall did (and as Flourens did not),
and the concept of continuity of nervous structures and functions became a basic
assumption. Their writings contain specific findings with reference to the
increase in cortical control (encephalization of functions) as the evolutionary
scale is ascended toward higher primates and man.
The work of David Ferrier was at the centre of these developments and
prototypical of the new physiology. Ferrier's experiments (first published in
1873) were the first to confirm Fritsch and Hitzig's. Where they had found five
localized centres for various movements in the dog, he soon found in the monkey
fifteen different areas where movement could be elicited by electrical
stimulation. His ablation work contributed to the localization of each of the
sensory functions
1 Ferrier, 1873, pp. 50, 55-6; 1874a, pp. 2, 80, 97, 127, 134-5.
2 Ferrier, 1876, pp. 163-98; 1886, pp. 268-345.
236
mentioned above. The significance of Ferrier's work for neurophysiology can
be glimpsed from the fact that Sir Charles Sherrington dedicated his classical
lectures on The Integrative Action of the Nervous System (1906) to
Ferrier: 'In token recognition of his many services to the experimental
physiology of the nervous system.' In fact, Sherrington's first publication was
an examination of the brains which Ferrier and Goltz had presented in 1881 on
the issue of cerebral localization. The work of Ferrier was thus one of the
bases of Sherrington's whole new emphasis in the study of neurophysiology,
involving the use of the concepts of integration, evolution, and reflex as
guiding principles. In his obituary notice on Ferrier for the Royal Society,
Sherrington points out that Ferrier had been the main figure in proving the
concept of cerebral localization, placing it at the centre of neurological
interest,[l] and providing the basis for a 'scientific phrenology'.[2]
In spite of the ambiguities in his writings before 1870, there can be no
doubt that Jackson's conceptions were the principal inspiration of Ferrier's
research. In his first paper Ferrier describes the object of his experiments as
the testing of Jackson's theory that localized and unilateral epilepsies are
caused by irritation or discharging lesions of the cortex. He sets out to
confirm these deductions by 'artificial reproduction of the clinical experiments
performed by disease’.[3] He concludes that his results confirm Jackson's
theories,[4] and says later that he considers Jackson the source of the revival
of interest in cerebral localization. 'The doctrine of cerebral localization has
in recent years assumed quite a new aspect, and differs so much from older
speculations in the kind of evidence on which its rests, as to be essentially a
new growth. Hughlings-Jackson made the first decided steps in this
direction.’[5] He acknowledges that Jackson's views were based on the 'rude
experiments of disease', a circumstance which precluded exact localizations.
'But to Hughlings-Jackson belongs the credit of having first indicated the motor
functions of certain regions of the cortex, and given a rational explanation of
the phenomena of unilateral cerebral convulsions.’[6] Ferrier's lavish
acknowledgement of his debts to Jackson is reminiscent of Jackson's statements
about Spencer. In his first paper to the Royal Society, Ferrier prefaces a
reference to a paper by Jackson on aphasia with the following remark: 'Without
being sure of agreeing
1 Sherrington, 1928, p. x.
2 Ibid., p. xiii. Cf. Sherrington, 1937, p. 303.
3 Ferrier, 1873, pp. 30, 85. Cf. Ferrier, 1874a, pp. 1, 14; Ferrier, 1886, p.
223; Ferrier, 1874b, p. 49.
4 Ferrier, 1873, pp. 85-7. Cf. Ferrier, 1874b, p. 44.
5 Ferrier, 1878, p. 14.
6 Ibid.
237
with this distinguished writer in all his views on this subject, I must
express my sense of the great obligations I am under to the philosophical
doctrines he has long taught, both as regards the initiation of this research
and the interpretation of its lessons.'[l] It was therefore natural that when
Ferrier published his classical monograph, he said 'to Dr Hughlings Jackson who
from a clinical and pathological standpoint anticipated many of the more
important results of recent experimental investigation into the functions of the
cerebral hemispheres this work is dedicated as a mark of the author's esteem and
admiration'.[2]
Ferrier is less enthusiastic in acknowledging his debts to Fritsch and
Hitzig. He gives as his second reason for undertaking his experiments the
intention of following up their discovery of the electrical excitability of the
hemispheres,[3] and cites his findings as confirming and extending theirs.[4] In
his report to the Royal Society, he acknowledges that his method was suggested
by their experiments.[5] However, the referees (Michael Foster and George
Rolleston) felt that he had made insufficient reference to their work, and T. H.
Huxley was called in as a third referee 'for the purpose of ascertaining my
opinion whether Dr Ferrier has or has not done sufficient justice to the labours
of his predecessors in the same field of investigation'.[6] Huxley concluded
that he had not, and Ferrier added a more explicit acknowledgement of their
priority in both method and findings.[7] Neither Foster nor Huxley was
satisfied, Hitzig complained bitterly, and the referees feared for the
reputation of the Royal Society and even of English science.[8] Ferrier
preferred to omit the experiments on dogs rather than to make the requested
changes,[9] and consequently only his experiments on monkeys were published.[10]
After this unfortunate episode, Ferrier's references to Fritsch and Hitzig were
more generous,[11] and by 1890 he was prepared to say that 'The whole aspect of
cerebral physiology and pathology was revolutionized by the discovery, first
made by Fritsch and Hitzig in 1870, that certain
1 Ferrier, 1874a, p. 129 (back).
2 Ferrier, 1876, p. v.
3 Ferrier, 1873, p. 30.
4 Ibid., pp. 31-2, 39, 49, 77.
5 Ferrier, 1874a, p. 2.
6 Rolleston et al., 1874, RR. 7. 302.
7 Ibid.; Ferrier, 1874a, pp. 2, 53 (red ink additions).
8 Rolleston et al., 1874, RR. 7. 302; RR. 7. 301. Huxley closed his
report with the following: 'In conclusion I particularly desire that these
remarks may not be supposed to diminish the value of the original results
obtained by Dr Ferrier-which appear to me to be very great-especially in respect
of the experiments on monkeys.' (Ibid., RR. 7. 301.)
9 Ibid., RR. 7. 305.
10 Ferrier, 1875a, 1875b. The two other sets of referees' reports on papers
by Ferrier in the Royal Society also complain that he failed to make adequate
acknowledgement of the work of his predecessors. (Rolleston, et al., 1874, RR. 12. 103.)
11 See Ferrier, 1874b, p. 45; Ferrier, 1875b, p. 433; Ferrier, 1876, pp. xv,
146-8; Ferrier, 1878, p. 15.
238
definite movements could be excited by the direct application of electrical
stimulation to definite regions of the cortex cerebri in dogs.'[l]
Ferrier's work was central to the classical period of cerebral localization
in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. In his classical monograph
on The Functions of the Brain he makes explicit the method and the
assumption which guided his work. He reviews the difficulties involved in making
inferences concerning man from animal studies and from the clinic, but he
continues:
Notwithstanding these difficulties and discrepancies, many of which will be
found, on careful examination, to be more apparent than real, experiments on
animals, under conditions selected and varied at the will of the experimenter,
are alone capable of furnishing precise data for sound inductions as to the
functions of the brain and its various parts; the experiments performed for us
by nature, in the form of diseased conditions, being rarely limited, or free
from such complications as render analysis and the discovery of cause and effect
extremely difficult, and in many cases practically impossible. The discovery of
new methods of investigation opens up new fields of inquiry, and leads to the
discovery of new truths. The discovery of the electric excitability of the brain
by Fritsch and Hitzig has given a fresh impetus to researches on the functions
of the brain, and thrown a new light on many obscure points in cerebral
physiology and pathology.[2]
And the assumption: every movement and every sense in a higher animal is
produced by a specific part of the brain, in a manner which must still be the
subject of extensive research.[3]
Ferrier conducted his original experiments at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum
and published his results in the Report of that institution for 1873.[4]
He was able to produce convulsions experimentally, thus confirming Jackson's
speculations by the artificial reproduction of the phenomenon of epilepsy.[5] He
also produced precise movements of individual muscles and groups of muscles by
the electrical stimulation of localized cortical centres in dogs, rabbits, cats,
and guinea pigs. Thus, he confirmed the motor significance of the grey matter of
the
1 Ferrier, 1890, p. 17.
2 Ferrier, 1876, pp. xiv-xv.
3 Thorwald, 1960, pp. 39-40.
4 The West Riding Lunatic Asylum is interesting in its own right, since it
was an early example of the combination of clinical and experimental work. See
Viets, 1938. Its director, James Crichton-Browne, apparently invited Ferrier
there to do his research, and Ferrier acknowledges his debt (Ferrier, 1874a, p.
136). Hollander claims that Crichton-Browne was an adherent to phrenology and
that he invited Ferrier to conduct his experiments in order to test phrenology.
(Hollander, n.d., I, 405-6.) I have seen no support for this claim in Ferrier's
writings or in the many volumes of reminiscences which Crichton-Browne wrote.
However, Crichton-Browne does mention phrenology often, and Hollander (Ibid.)
quoted some flattering references to Gall and Spurzheim. Crichton-Browne later
joined with Ferrier and Jackson to found the neurological journal Brain.
5 Ferrier, 1873, p. 85.
239
cerebral cortex.[1] In addition to the implications of his findings for
physiology and clinical neurology, Ferrier planned to use his techniques to
‘attempt to artificially excite conditions similar to normal psychic or
volitional stimuli'.[2] The hope held out by these findings was that ‘we may
ultimately be enabled to translate into their psychological signification and
localize phrenologically the organic centres of various mental endowments'.[3]
His initial publications caused an immediate sensation. The work was
conducted in the spring and reported to the British Association in September by
his former teacher, Professor Rutherford:
These researches mark the commencement of a new era in our knowledge of brain
function. Of all the studies in comparative physiology there will be none more
interesting, and few so important, as those in which the various centres will be
mapped out in the brains throughout the vertebrate series. A new, but this time
a true, system of phrenology will probably be founded upon them: by this
however, I do not mean that it will be possible to tell a man’s faculties by the
configuration of his skull; but merely this; that the various mental faculties
will be assigned to definite territories of the brain, as Gall and Spurzheim
long ago maintained, although their geography of the brain was erroneous...
these investigations constitute the most important work which has been
accomplished in physiology for a very considerable time past.[4]
Ferrier's findings were noted by the retiring President of the Royal Society
in December: 'In Anatomy, the most striking subject appears to be Professor
Ferrier's experimental discussion of the actions of different parts of the
brain, explained at the late Meeting of the British Association.’[5] His
findings were communicated to the Royal Society the following March. He was
nominated as a candidate for election the same year and elected in 1867. The
Royal Society also granted him money to extend his researcher to the brains on
monkeys. He gave the Croonian Lectures in 1874 and again the following year.
When his monograph appeared in 1876, George Croom Robertson (in his review in Mind), referred to it as ‘this eagerly looked for work’[6] and noted that it
was classical.
His physiological results have been obtained with great skill, and, whatever
may be said against his interpretations, they are at once clearly conceived and
forcibly argued. It is little to say of both that they must henceforth be
1 Ferrier, 1873, p 90
2 Ibid., p. 72. Cf. Ferrier, 1874a, p. I
3 Ibid., p. 76. Ferrier's findings are considered in greater detail in Young,
1968.
4 Rutherford, 1874, p. 122.
5 Airy, 1873, p. 9.
6 Robertson, 1877, p. 92
240
reckoned with, by psychologists as well as physiologists, for any doctrine of
the brain in relation to mind.[l]
By 1881, the lines were clearly drawn between Ferrier's views supporting
localization and those of Goltz, who advocated cortical equipotentiality. The
result of the confrontation between them, at the Seventh International Medical
Congress in London, was that Ferrier carried the day with his more precise
methods and dramatic findings.[2] Ferrier's success in demonstrating the
experimental reproduction of localized motor dysfunctions by cerebral lesions is
epitomized by the remark Charcot is reported to have made on seeing one of
Ferrier's monkeys limping about the room with unilateral paralysis of the arm
and leg: 'It is a patient!'[3] Ferrier's work was equally significant in
establishing centres for the sensory modalities on the basis of ablation
experiments.[4]
The developments which culminated in Ferrier's work had led from Broca's
clinico-pathological localization of the speech centre (1860) to Fritsch and
Hitzig's demonstration of cerebral excitability and localized motor functions
(1870), and the experimental localization of sensory functions by the mid
1880's. By the close of the century the main cortical centres for motor
functions and the various sensory modalities in mammals were established to the
general satisfaction of workers in the field. By 1901, the most complete
compendium of knowledge in philosophy and psychology defined cerebral
localization as 'the doctrine that various parts of the brain have relatively
distinct functions'.[5] The theory that certain psychical and physiological
functions are limited to definite areas of cortex is, 'in its broadest form . .
. thoroughly substantiated by anatomical, pathological, and experimental
data'.[6] In 1902, the Encyclopedia Britannica reflected the orthodoxy of
the 'new phrenology' and recalled its beginnings: 'the principles of cerebral
localization are, after all, only a scientific statement of matters that are of
general belief. We are all more or less phrenologists'.[7]
Ferrier's Conception of the Functions of the Brain
Ferrier's conception of the function of the brain is a corollary of the
theories of Bain, Spencer, and Jackson, for which he provided the experimental
evidence.
1 Robertson, 1877, p. 92.
2 MacCormac, 1881, 1, 218-242d. Cf. the wholly accurate dramatization of this
confrontation in Thorwald, 1960, Chapter 1.
3 Thorwald, 1960, pp. 37-9. Cf. Viets, 1938.
4 Ferrier, 1876, pp. 163-98; Ferrier, 1886, pp. 268-345; Ferrier, 1890, pp.
38-126.
5 Baldwin, 1901, II, 15.
6 Ibid. See above p. 11.
7 Anon, 1902, p. 710.
241
It must follow from the experimental data that mental operations in the last
analysis must be merely the subjective side of sensory and motor substrata. This
view has been repeatedly and clearly enunciated by Hughlings-Jackson, with whose
physiological and psychological deductions from clinical and pathological data I
frequently find myself in completed accordance.[1]
In the second edition, he adds, 'For the cerebral hemispheres consist only of
centres related respectively to the sensory and motor tracts, which connect them
with the periphery and with each other'.[2] Ideas are revived associations of
sensations and movements,[3] thought is internal speech,[4] and intellectual
attention is ideal vision.[5] In short, all conceptions of function are
reducible to sensation, motion, and association. Ferrier's work represents the
final extension of the Bell-Magendie paradigm to the most rostral part of the
neuraxis-the cerebral cortex-and its use as an all-embracing explanatory
conception in both physiology and psychology:
In order to make these sweeping claims for his findings, Ferrier had to
attribute psychological significance to the simple phenomena which he observed
on stimulation and ablation. In his experiments on motor functions, this
involved two stages: the muscular contractions elicited on stimulation were
interpreted as coordinated, purposive actions; these, in turn, were interpreted
as the overt manifestations of complex psychological functions.
Many of the movements such as those of the hands, the legs, the facial
muscles and the mouth have the aspect of purpose or volition and are of the same
nature as those which the animal makes in its ordinary intelligent action.[6]
Thus in monkeys capable of highly complex and differentiated movements of the
hands and feet, we find in the brain a comparatively large region presiding over
these movements. For it is found on irritation, that combined muscular actions,
which, in their individuality and totality, are such as the animals make in
carrying out their desires and purposes, are capable of being excited at will,
by stimulation of various localised centres in this region.[7]
He reports the same findings in lower organisms, although their
less-specialized movements have less differentiated centres.[8] He considers
1 Ferrier, 1876, pp. 256-7.
2 Ferrier, 1886, p. 426.
3 Ibid., pp. 437
4 Ibid., p. 462.
5 Ibid., pp. 463-4
6 Ferrier, 1874a, p. 95.
7 Ibid., pp. 117-18. Cf. Ferrier, 1874b, pp. 47-9, where Ferrier elaborates
his conception of a voluntary motor centre (and provides a diagram which shows
the corpus striatum as a centre for coordination of voluntary movements).
8 Ferrier, 1874a, pp. 117-18.
242
these regions the 'centres for voluntary initiation of the same movements as
result from faradization'.[1]
These centres, however, have another signification in so far as they form the
motor substrata of mind. Besides being centres for the accomplishment of acts of
volition, they form the organic centres for the memory of accomplished acts. The
centres for articulation besides their function of setting in action the complex
and delicate movements involved in articulate speech, have the power of
permanently recording the results of their functional activity.[2]
By similar, though indirect, reasoning, he concludes that the sensory centres
are the 'seat of the sensory memory or organic basis of ideation'.[3] The
frontal regions gave no response to stimulation, but on ablation the animals
behaved in a way which Ferrier felt resembled dementia.[4] He concluded that the
frontal lobes were the probable 'substrata of those psychical processes which
lie at the foundation of the higher intellectual operations'.[5]
It should be stressed that Ferrier's localizations were neither the
fulfilment of Gall's hopes nor those of Flourens. His relations with Gall's
views will be considered presently. Though he agrees with Flourens in a
superficial way, his alternative scheme eliminated the hiatus which Flourens and
his followers had been at pains to preserve.
Intelligence and will have no local habitation distinct from the sensory and
motor substrata of the cortex generally. There are centres for special forms of
sensation and ideation, and centres for special motor activities and
acquisitions, in response to and in association with the activity of sensory
centres; and these in their respective cohesions, actions, and interactions form
the substrata of mental operations in all their aspects and all their range.[6]
The above was written in 1886. In his first report to the Royal Society
(1874), Ferrier was cautious but hopeful about the possibility of drawing
sweeping inferences from simple motions.
One would not be justified in fixing on the centres of the zygomatic muscles
as the seat of a hypothetical faculty of mirth or such like. The complexity of
even the simplest mental conception renders the localization of faculties in the
phrenological sense a mere chimera. We must not however shut out the
1 Ferrier, 1874a, pp. 95-7.
2 Ferrier, 1874b, pp. 55-6.
3 Ibid., p. 57. Cf. Ferrier, 1874a, p. 97.
4 Ferrier, 1874a, pp. 101, 103, 123. Cf. Ferrier, 1878, p. 6.
5 Ferrier, 1886, p. 467.
6 Ibid.; cf. p. 436.
243
possibility that the comparative development of special regions may be taken
as an index of a capacity for certain acquirements-as an instance, it may be
said that a considerable development of the region of Broca's convolution may
be, ceteris paribus, taken as an index of a capacity for the acquisition of
languages. Whether this is so or not is a subject which will require careful
scientific investigation. The line of research is one which is likely to lead to
valuable results, and may form the basis of a scientific phrenology.[1]
However, it is clear from his later writings (and the example given above)
that he progressively drew on the theories of Bain, Spencer, and Jackson and
interpreted alterations in simple sensory and motor phenomena as the basis for a
comprehensive psychophysiology or, in the jargon of the times, a 'New
Phrenology'.[2]
Some Practical and Conceptual Implications of Classical Localization
Whereas the only immediate practical fruit of Gall's work was the
pseudo-science of phrenology (with its dubious character delineations), the
concepts and findings of Broca, Fritsch and Hitzig, Ferrier, and Jackson led
directly to the development of modern neurosurgery. The significance of their
work has been dramatized by an historian of medicine, Jürgen Thorwald, and his
description vividly conveys the issue through the eyes of those involved:
As we saw it, the problem of cerebral surgery was not so much the opening of
the cranium and exposure of the brain; neither was it the removal of a tumour,
but the localizing of the tumour before operation. The trouble spot was
concealed beneath the cranium. None of the diagnostic methods of the time could
establish its position so clearly that the skull could be directly entered at
the right spot. Pain was distributed over whole sections of the brainpan and
could not serve as an indicator of the site of a tumour. Here was the gulf that
had to be bridged.
In the light of this problem it is clear why the experiments and arguments of
Fritsch, Hitzig, and Ferrier meant so much. . . . If it were true that some
small part of the brain were the fixed controlling organ of every muscle and
every sense, and if it were also true that this functional centre
1 Ferrier, 1874a, pp. 133-4. Cf. the remarkably 'phrenological' conclusion of
his monograph (1886, pp. 467-8).
2 This was the phrase used by Bastian and Wundt, among many others, and
became the usual way of referring to the localizers in the period up until about
1910. The last of the ‘old’ phrenologists, of course, attempted to use Ferrier's
own reasoning as a means of appropriating his findings to their theories. (See
Williams, 1894, pp. 176-92, and the writings of Hollander. It has been
noted-above p. 44 that A. R. Wallace accepted this interpretation. Wallace,
1901, Chapter 16.)
244
occupied a particular and unvarying place in the brain, then it should be
possible to deduce from the paralysis or other affliction of the body the site
of the abnormality in the brain, the location of, say, a tumour. It should then
be possible to attack the disease by surgery aimed at the precise spot where
excision was required.[l]
Ferrier had pointed out in his first paper on cerebral localization that his
findings could be instructive for diagnosis and exact localization of the seats
of lesions.[2] As soon as he had reported his initial findings, he began
investigating their clinical implications by interpreting some cases from the
West Riding Lunatic Asylum.[3] Although he was considerably handicapped by the
poor specification of the sites of lesions,[4] his paper provided the model
which future clinical localizers would use. He also suggested the application of
these principles to intracranial surgery.
It was this reasoning that led Professor William Macewen, at Glasgow, to
undertake some of the earliest operations inside the cranium in modern times.[5]
In 1879 he removed a swelling from one of the coverings of the brain which had
been producing convulsions. He performed this and several other operations
successfully, basing his localizations on Ferrier's reasoning. The first
deliberate operation for cerebral tumour occurred in 1884, after Ferrier had
forcefully reiterated his views in 1883.[6] The patient, a man named Henderson,
had been progressively paralysed on the left side and suffered severe headaches.
Using Ferrier's localization patterns, it was decided that the tumour was in the
region of the hand and finger centres and not more than two inches in diameter.
The operation was performed by Dr Rickman Godlee, a nephew of Lister, who was
practised in the relatively new techniques of asepsis. Dr Hughes Bennett had
conceived the operation and directed it, but he was not a surgeon. In fact, at
that time there were no surgeons at the new National Hospital, Queen Square,
where the operation was performed. Ferrier was present at the operation, in
which the surgeon cut into the cerebral substance and removed the tumour. It had
been feared that the patient would die when the knife entered the cerebral
substance. He improved and could move his left leg, although his arm was worse.
Unfortunately, although the operation was a success the patient died of surgical
infection, which has been attributed to ineffective methods of treating his
headaches before the operation. The
1 Thorwald, 1960, pp. 12-13.
2 Ferrier, 1873, pp. 30, 87-8, 95.
3 Ferrier, 1874b.
4 Ibid., pp. 30-1.
5 Jefferson, 1960, pp. 132-49.
6 Sherrington 1937, pp. 302-4.
245
operation eliminated his headaches and demonstrated the practicability of
neurosurgery based on local diagnosis.[1]
The modern science of localizing neurosurgery was thus a lineal descendant of
Gall's principle of cerebral localization. From the enormous study of cerebral
localization, physicians have derived a body of observations which allow them to
diagnose and localize brain lesions with a degree of refinement that has not
been equalled in the study of any other organ. It has become possible to predict
with accuracy the local involvement of a few square millimeters of the most
intricate cerebral or spinal tissue.[2]
Having indicated these dramatic practical fruits of cerebral localization, I
am bound to mention that the history I have traced has been decidedly biased. In
fact, the localization of lesions is the only major tenet of the concept of
cerebral localization that has not been challenged on experimental, logical, or
conceptual grounds by some of the most eminent investigators of the functions of
the nervous system. It has recently been argued that 'Instead of speaking of
cerebral localization, we should be satisfied with the less prejudiced, less
involved, and more cautious concept of vulnerability of a given function or
behaviour to regional lesions'.[3]
I have shown the demise of Flourens' objections. But, even in the classical
period which I have reviewed, the work of F. L. Goltz stood as a constant
challenge to the work of Fritsch and Hitzig, Munk, and Ferrier. Hughlings
Jackson became progressively opposed to the rigidity of the prevailing view, and
the flowering of his concepts in Sherrington's investigations lent plasticity,
variability, and complexity to the relatively simple concepts that prevailed
before. The same complexities arose in the clinical aphasia tradition. Henry
Head calls the period from 1906 onward-following the preeminence of the
diagram-makers and the iconoclastic work of Pierre Maric — simply 'chaos'.[4]
The concept faculty of articulate language had fallen long before. In fact, the
very article quoted above as the high water mark of acceptance of the theory of
cerebral localization stresses its diagnostic and surgical applications and
adds, 'but it has much less significance for the proper construction of mental
processes than has sometimes been supposed'.[5]
1 See Ballance, 1921; Thorwald, 1960; Ferrier, 1878.
2 Riese and Hoff, 1950-51.
3 Riese, 1959, p. 148. Cf. Walshe, 1957.
4 Head, 1926, I, Chapter VI.
5 Baldwin, 1901, II, 16.
246
Gall and Ferrier
In contrasting Ferrier's The Functions of the Brain with Gall's work
of the same title, written fifty years earlier, one finds the balance between
physiological and psychological statements reversed. Gall's work is almost
wholly concerned with the description and analysis of the faculties (functions)
and the attempt to arrive at methods and criteria for discovering the
fundamental variables in experience and behaviour. Ferrier devotes only ten per
cent. of his text to what he calls 'the subjective aspect [of] the functions of
the brain'.[l] Most of his monograph is devoted to the 'physiological aspects',
and he concluded that these consist of 'a system of sensory and motor centres.
In their subjective aspect the functions of the brain are synonymous with mental
operations, the consideration of which belongs to the science of psychology'.[2]
All Ferrier felt that was needed to convert his physiological findings into
psychologically significant statements was the assumption of psychophysical
parallelism (which he adopted from Bain, Spencer, and Jackson) and the phrase
'subjective aspect'.
If Gall was naïve in believing that the organization and physiology of the
brain correspond with his faculties in a simple one-to-one fashion, Ferrier was
equally so in suggesting that the primary sensory and motor areas could explain
psychological functions in a simple manner. He had localized sensory and motor
areas, but he had not provided a psychophysiology which accounts for the
adaptations of organisms to their environments. As Zangwill says, 'Whatever its
role in the production of muscular activity, the motor cortex cannot be regarded
as the seat of any function recognisable to the student of behaviour.’[3]
The experimental sensory-motor psychophysiology which had been founded on the
concepts of Bain and Spencer was on a very firm physiological basis. It had been
built up by a progressive extension of the Bell-Magendie law-a certain fact
about the nervous system-and then united with the concept of cerebral
localization. However, cerebral localization had become scientific only by
abandoning the goal which Gall had laid down in the beginning of his work: to
relate the significant variables in the character and behaviour of men and
animals to the functioning of the brain. The sensory-motor school was
undoubtedly correct in rejecting Gall's faculty psychology as an inadequate
explanation of psychological phenomena. But, in grounding itself on a secure
physiological basis, the sensory-motor tradition cut itself off from the
1 Ferrier, 1886, p. 424.
2 Ibid.
3 Zangwill, 1963, p. 337.
247
approach to psychology which was the most important aspect of Gall's work and
which had been extended in Spencer's conception of psychology as a biological
science. In rejecting Gall's answers, it lost sight of the significance of his
questions and of the possibilities inherent in the biological, adaptive view
shared by Gall and Spencer. Insufficient attention was paid to what the
sensory-motor elements should be required to explain. In default of significant
questions, the only answers that were forthcoming were about sensory modalities
and muscular movements. The sensory-motor analysis was therefore psychologically
insignificant and led only to a partial understanding of the primary projection
areas of the somatic cortex. The role of many of these for normal behaviour has
yet to be determined. Questions about adaptive, biologically significant
functions had to be asked anew by other branches of biology which developed
independently from the ideas of Bain, Spencer, and Darwin. The problem that
Ferrier's work left for the twentieth century was that of retaining scientific
rigour, while regaining contact with biologically significant functions.
Gall and Ferrier can be seen as extremes on a continuum of possible
approaches in brain and behaviour research. Gall stresses functions as adaptive
and as related to character, personality, mastery of the environment, social
intercourse, and intellectual, artistic, and mechanical achievement. He lets his
adaptively conceived and naturalistically derived functions dictate to the
brain. His conception of its functioning involves no direct physiological
knowledge. Ferrier, on the other hand, sacrifices the significance of functions
to physiological accuracy. His view reduces all the functions which Gall
determined by observing behaviour, to the two categories of sensation and
motion. His data are derived solely from direct experimentation on the brain and
observation of the phenomena produced. Further progress in the field would have
to mediate between these extremes. If the functions were to be conceived
adaptively, the underlying physiology would have to be worked out. If the
physiology was to be investigated as carefully as Ferrier did, it would have to
be related to the independent findings of psychologists and ethologists. Future
hope lay in bringing these extremes of function and physiology into closer
communication. Gall sacrificed one for the sake of the other; Ferrier is the
complementary case. Neither will do alone. Though Gall was unable to follow his
own advice, the modern investigator is in a much better position to do so.
Whoever would not remain in complete ignorance of the resources which cause
him to act; whoever would seize, at a single philosophical glance, the
248
nature of man and animals, and their relations to external objects; whoever
would establish, on the intellectual and moral functions, a solid doctrine of
mental diseases, of the general and governing influence of the brain in the
states of health and disease, should know, that it is indispensable, that the
study of the organization of the brain should march side by side with that of
its functions.[1]
1 Gall, 1835, II, 45-6.