Fraser mentions a brother and sister, aged twenty and thirty, respectively, who from birth had exhibited signs of defective development of the cerebellum. They lacked power of coordination and walked with a drunken, staggering gait; they could not touch the nose with the finger when their eyes were shut, etc. The parents of these unfortunate persons were perfectly healthy, as were the rest of their family. Cruveilhier cites a case of a girl of eleven who had absolutely no cerebellum, with the same symptoms which are characteristic in such cases. There is also recorded the history of a man who was deficient in the corpus callosum; at the age of sixty-two, though of feeble intelligence, he presented no signs of nervous disorder. Claude Bernard made an autopsy on a woman who had no trace of olfactory lobes, and after a minute inquiry into her life he found that her sense of smell had been good despite her deficiency.
Buhring relates the history of a case somewhat analogous to viability of anencephalous monsters. It was a bicephalous child that lived thirty-two hours after he had ligated one of its heads.
{footnote} The argument that the brain is not the sole organ of the mind is in a measure substantiated by a wonderful case of a decapitated rooster, reported from Michigan. A stroke of the knife bad severed the larynx and removed the whole mass of the cerebrum, leaving the inner aspect and base of the skull exposed.
The cerebrum was partly removed; the external auditory meatus was preserved. Immediately after the decapitation the rooster was left to its supposed death struggles, but it ran headless to the barn, where it was secured and subsequently fed by pushing corn down its esophagus, and allowing water to trickle into this tube from the spout of an oil-can. The phenomena exhibited by the rooster were quite interesting. It made all the motions of pecking, strutted about, flapped its wings, attempted to crow, but, of course, without ****** any sound. It exhibited no signs of incoordination, but did not seem to hear. A ludicrous exhibition was the absurd, sidelong pas seul made toward the hens.
Ward mentions an instance of congenital absence of the corpora callosum. Paget and Henry mention cases in which the corpora callosum, the fornix, and septum lucidum were imperfectly formed.
Maunoir reports congenital malformation of the brain, consisting of almost complete absence of the occipital lobe. The patient died at the twenty-eighth month. Combettes reports the case of a girl who died at the age of eleven who had complete absence of the cerebellum in addition to other minor structural defects;this was probably the case mentioned by Cruveilhier.
Diminution in volume of the head is called microcephaly. Probably the most remarkable case on record is that mentioned by Lombroso.
The individual was called "l'homme-oiseau," or the human bird, and his cranial capacity was only 390 c.c. Lombroso speaks of another individual called "l'homme-lapin," or man-rabbit, whose cranium was only slightly larger than that of the other, measuring 490 mm. in circumference. Castelli alludes to endemic microcephaly among some of the peoples of Asia. We also find it in the Caribbean Islands, and from the skulls and portraits of the ancient Aztecs we are led to believe that they were also microcephalic.
Two creatures of celebrity were Maximo and Bartola, who for twenty-five years have been shown in America and in Europe under the name of the "Aztecs" or the "Aztec children". They were male and female and very short, with heads resembling closely the bas-reliefs on the ancient Aztec temples of Mexico. Their facial angle was about 45 degrees, and they had jutting lips and little or no chin. They wore their hair in an enormous bunch to magnify the deformity. These curiosities were born in Central America and were possibly half Indian and Negro. They were little better than idiots in point of intelligence.
Figure 92 represents a microcephalic youth known as the "Mexican wild boy," who was shown with the Wallace circus.
Virchow exhibited a girl of fourteen whose face was no larger than that of a new-born child, and whose head was scarcely as large as a man's fist. Magitot reported a case of a microcephalic woman of thirty who weighed 70 pounds.
Hippocrates and Strabonius both speak of head-binding as a custom inducing artificial microcephaly, and some tribes of North American Indians still retain this custom.
As a rule, microcephaly is attended with associate idiocy and arrested development of the rest of the body. Ossification of the fontanelles in a mature infant would necessarily prevent full development of the brain. Osiander and others have noticed this anomaly. There are cases on record in which the fontanelles have remained open until *****hood.
Augmentation of the volume of the head is called macrocephaly, and there are a number of curious examples related. Benvenuti describes an individual, otherwise well formed, whose head began to enlarge at seven. At twenty-seven it measured over 37 inches in circumference and the man's face was 15 inches in height; no other portion of his body increased abnormally; his voice was normal and he was very intelligent. He died of apoplexy at the age of thirty.