Chapter II (2)

Here is the frequency with which the third trochanter occurs according to a list which I have compiled:--

-------+-----------------------------+-----------+----------------
| |Frequency |
Number | |per 100 |
of | Populations. |of the 3rd | Observers.
Femurs.| |trochanter.|
-------+-----------------------------+-----------+----------------
42 |Belgians and French of the | |
| Reindeer Period | 13 | Houzé
28 |Negroes | 21 | Houzé, Costa
68 |Ainus | 26.5 |}Koganei
73 |Japanese | 28.8 |}
67 |Inhabitants of Brussels | 30.2 | Houzé
102 |Italians | 30.4 | Costa
54 |Hungarians | 36.1 | Török
110 |Belgians and French of the | |
| Polished Stone Period | 38 | Houzé
76 |Fuegians | 64.3 | Hyad., Denik.,
| | | Martin, Costa
-------+-----------------------------+-----------+----------------

Two points will be observed in this table, the rarity of the third trochanter among Negroes, and its excessive frequency among the Fuegians. The women of the latter have also the hypochanteric fossa 80 times in a 100 (out of 76 femurs examined); it almost forms then, like the third trochanter, a character of race.

In the _tibia_ attention has been called to _platycnemia_--that is to say, the transversal flattening in the upper third of the diaphysis of the bone, so that its posterior side becomes transformed into a border. It has been supposed that this form is a reversion towards the simian type, but Manouvrier[87] has shown that platycnemia never attains in the anthropoid apes the degree which it presents in the human race, where it is due especially to the development of the _tibialis posticus_ muscle which plays a great part in the maintenance of the upright position, and in the movements of walking and running. The degree of platycnemia may thus vary according to the more or less sedentary or wandering habits of the different populations.

_The retroversion of the head of the tibia_--that is to say, the slope of the articular surface of it behind--pointed out and described for the first time by Collignon in prehistoric tibias, is also not a simian character. According to Manouvrier,[88] it is often met with among Parisians in a degree superior to that exhibited by anthropoid apes. This retroversion, generally associated with platycnemia, is connected with the half-bending attitude of the lower limb in the manner of walking which is called the _bending gait_, common among peasants, and especially mountaineers. The retroversion is more marked in the tibia of the new-born child than in that of the adult, and this appears to have a connection with the permanent bending of the knee during intra-uterine life.

_The length of the bones of the pelvic and thoracic limbs_ varies according to race, but it is difficult to establish the degree of these variations, owing to the small number of observations made. Besides, we can more profitably substitute for measurements of limbs on the skeleton those of the living subject; in the latter case we can at least relate all the measurements to the true height of the subject, whilst the height is never exactly known from the skeleton.

However, the measurements of the long bones have their importance, for they permit us to _reconstitute_ approximately, as we have already seen (p. 33), _the height_ of subjects of which we have only the bones, as is the case of all populations that have preceded us.

It is for this reason that I give the following figures derived from nine series of from five to seventy-two skeletons. The length of the humerus represents from 19.5 (Polynesians) to 20.7 per cent. (Europeans) of the height of the skeleton; that of the radius from 14.3 (Europeans) to 15.7 (Negroes); that of the femur from 26.9 (South Americans) to 27.9 (New Caledonians); lastly, the length of the tibia represents from 21.5 (Esthonians) to 23.8 per cent. (New Caledonians) of the height of the skeleton. Thus the differences are insignificant, and the variations between race and race do not extend beyond the limits of a unit and a half for each of the bones.

The length of the radius in relation to the humerus (= 100) exhibits variations a little more appreciable. It is 72.5 among Europeans, 76 among New Caledonians, 79 among Negroes, 79.7 among Veddahs, 80.6 among Fuegians, 81.7 among Andamanese. Let us note that the fore-arm, relatively to the arm, is much longer in the fœtus in the first stages of development and in early infancy than in the adult;[89] it is shortened in proportion to the height as the fœtus and the infant grow.

_Proportions of the Body in the Living Subject._--In spite of the quantity of material accumulated, we have not been able up to the present to make any use of the differences which these proportions exhibit according to race. The reason is that these differences are very trifling. In order to understand this proposition better I will give by way of illustration the proportions which we may consider as nearly normal in a European of average stature (1 m. 65, or 5 ft. 5 ins.). Topinard established thus the principal proportions of the European,[90] assuming the height = 100.

Head 13
Trunk and neck 35
(32.7 without neck.)
Thoracic limb 45
Arm 19.5
Forearm 14
Hand 11.5
Abdominal limb 47.5
(from the ischiatic plane to the ground.)
Foot 15
Span of arms (middle finger of one hand to
middle finger of the other.) 104.4

The proportions in the different populations of the earth oscillate round these figures without diverging from them more than three units, or five at most. Thus, for example, the proportions of the height of the head vary between 11.4 and 15, according to Rojdestvensky;[91] the proportions of the trunk without the neck from 32.6 to 32.8, according to Topinard, etc.

The length of the thoracic limb scarcely varies more than between 42.6 and 47.6, according to the lists of sixteen and twenty-seven series published by Ivanovsky and Topinard,[92] and according to a third list of twenty-four series that I have drawn up. We can count on the fingers the populations in which the proportion for the hand exceeds the figure 11 with its decimals or sinks below it; it is the same in regard to the foot, of which the figure 15 with its decimals is rarely exceeded or is not reached.[93] The variations of length for the abdominal limb do not extend further than from 45.1 to 49.2 (Topinard), etc.

The thoracic perimeter exceeds half the height in all adult populations of the world, except perhaps some groups of Georgian Svanes and Jews, or other populations which happen to be in bad hygienic conditions.

Thus proportions of the limbs are not good characters of race. Besides, certain dimensions (length of limbs, of the head) are always dependent on height. Thus individuals and races of high stature have the face and abdominal limb a little more elongated than individuals and races of short stature. On the other hand, individuals and races of short stature have in general the head larger, the trunk shorter, and the thoracic perimeter relatively more considerable than individuals and races of high stature, but the differences are very trifling as a general rule.

_Trunk and Limbs of the Living._--To complete our study on the living subject, let us again note some peculiarities. The _neck_ is ordinarily long and thin among Negroes, Ethiopians (Figs. 9 and 138), and on the contrary short among the majority of the American Indians (Figs. 163 and 169); the shoulders are very broad among the women of the latter (Fig. 165), and very narrow among the Chechen and Lesghi women. Usually the long neck is associated with a form of trunk like an inverted pyramid and a high stature, while the short neck surmounts a cylindrical trunk and is associated with a low stature. _Ensellure_--that is to say, the strongly marked curve of the dorso-lumbo-sacral region--is especially marked among Spanish women whose lumbar incurvation is such, and the movements of the lumbar vertebræ so extensive, that they are able to throw themselves backwards so as even to touch the ground (Duchenne of Boulogne). Ensellure is also more marked among Negroes than among Whites. It must be noted that it may also be merely a consequence of abdominal obesity, pregnancy, or _steatopygia_.

By the last-mentioned term is designated excessive projection of the buttocks due to the accumulation of subcutaneous fat (Fig. 24); these are physiological fatty tumours proceeding from the hypertrophy of the adipose tissue more or less abundant in these regions among all races, and analogous to the fatty tumours of the cheeks of the orang-utan, which are simply Bichat’s fatty balls existing among men and among the anthropoids,[94] only excessively developed. As in those tumours, the fat of the steatopygous masses does not even disappear after disease which has emaciated the rest of the body. Steatopygia is characteristic of the Bushman race; it is only met with in all its characters (alteration of form on the lateral and anterior sides of the thighs; persistence even in emaciation, etc.) among populations into the composition of which enters the Bushman element: Hottentots (Fig. 24), Nama, etc. The cases of steatopygia observed among other Wolof or Somali women, for example, are only the exaggeration of adipose deposit among the muscular fibres, as with Europeans, not of the subcutaneous adipose layer. Steatopygia is especially marked in the Bushman woman, in whom it commences to develop only from the age of puberty; but it exists also, though in a less degree, in the male of that race (Fig. 143).

We cannot enlarge on other exterior characters: on the form of the trunk and of the limbs; on the leg with poorly developed calf, and the foot with the prominent heel which is observed among certain Negroes (but not among all); on the more or less diverging big toe which is remarked among the majority of the peoples of India, Indo-China, and the insular world dependent on Asia, from Sumatra to Japan, etc.

Two words, however, on the subject of the pretended existence of races of _men with tails_. We must relegate to the domain of fable the cases of this kind which are announced from time to time in publications for the popularisation of science so called. The costumes of certain populations have given rise to the fable of men with tails (see frontispiece). Isolated cases of men having as an anomaly a caudal excrescence more or less long, free, or united to the trunk, are known to science, and numbers have been described, but no single serious description has ever been given of populations with tails.[95] Quite recently, again, Lartschneider has demonstrated that the ilio-coccygian and pubio-coccygian muscles in mammifera have lost in man their character of symmetrical and paired skeleton muscles, and are driven back towards the interior of the pelvis as single unpaired muscle plates (fibres of the _levator ani_). Primitive man has never had a caudal appendage since he acquired the biped attitude; the disappearance of the tail is even one of the indispensable conditions of that attitude.[96]

The different internal or external organs of man afford also some special characters, though not very numerous, for differentiating race.

The _muscular system_, little known outside white races, has, up to the present, not given any important indication on this point. At the very outside, we can say, thanks to the works of Chudzinsky, Le Double, Macalister, Popovsky, Testut, Turner, etc., and the Committee of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, that certain muscular anomalies are more frequent in the Negro than in the White, and that the muscles of the face are less differentiated in the former than in the latter.[97] In the splanchnic system some differences have also been observed between the White and the Negro, notably the excessive volume of the liver, the spleen, the suprarenal-capsules, and, in general, the hypertrophy of all the organs of excretion in the latter compared with the former. The venous system appears also to be more developed in the Negro than in the White. Somewhat notable differences must certainly be observable in the structure and general conformation of the organs of the voice and of speech--tongue, larynx, lungs. But our knowledge on this subject is still very imperfect. Attention has been drawn to the feeble development of the anterior fibres of the stylo-glossal muscle of the tongue, the greater development of the Wrisberg cartilage of the larynx with the muscles stronger in the Negro than in the White,[98] but nothing is known about the larynx of other races.

There is nothing, even to the bony parts of the vocal apparatus, which does not undergo ethnic variations. Thus the larger cornua of the _hyoid bone_ are not attached to the body of it in 75 to 95 per cent. of cases observed among the Indians of America, whilst the same anomaly is met with in only 25 to 35 per cent. of cases among Europeans, and only in 30 per cent. among Negroes, which probably harmonises with the differences in the production of sounds in the language of each of these peoples.[99]

The _genital organs_ also present some differences according to race, but rather in the dimensions of the various parts than in their form. The only peculiarity worth notice is the exaggerated development of the labia minora among the Bushman women, known under the name of “apron.” This peculiarity, which appears from infancy, is met with only among the Bushman race and the people into whose composition enters the Bushman element--Hottentots, Nama, Griqua, etc.[100]

The breasts of women may also present variations of form. Ploss[101] classes them under four heads according to their height, which is inferior, equal, or more or less superior to the diameter of their base; we have thus mammæ like a bowl or the segment of a globe, hemispherical, conical, and pyriform. These forms may be found in combination with a more or less extended and prominent areola, and with a nipple which may be discoidal, hemispherical, digitiform, etc. It is especially among Negresses that we meet with conical and pyriform mammæ, and digitiform nipples, while mammæ shaped like the segment of a sphere predominate among Mongolian and European women of the fair race; women of the south-east of Europe and hither Asia have for the most part hemispherical breasts.

Among the internal organs, the _brain_, or better, the _encephalon_, deserves a little more attention. I have already said with regard to cranial capacity (p. 56) that appreciable differences have been observed in the volume of the brain-case according to age, sex, and race. This difference is in harmony with irregularity in the volume and consequently in the weight of the brain. At birth, European boys have 334 grammes of brain on an average, girls 287 grammes. This quantity increases rapidly up to 20 years of age, remains almost stationary between 20 and 40 or 45, then begins to decrease, slowly at first, until 60 years, then more rapidly.

Let me also add that the weight of the encephalon varies enormously according to individuals. Topinard[102] in a series of 519 Europeans, men of the lower and middle classes, found that variations in weight extended from 1025 grammes to 1675 grammes. The average weight of the brain among adult Europeans (20 to 60 years) has been fixed by Topinard, from an examination of 11,000 specimens weighed, at 1361 grammes for man, 1290 grammes for woman. It has been asserted that the other races have a lighter brain, but the fact has not been established by a sufficient number of examples. In reality all that can be put against the 11,000 brain-weighings mentioned above concerning the cerebral weights of non-European races, amounts to nothing, or almost nothing. The fullest series that Topinard[103] has succeeded in making, that of Negroes, comprises only 190 brains; that of Annamese, which comes immediately after, contains only 18 brains. And what do the figures of these series teach us? The first series, dealing with Negroes, gives a mean weight not much different from that of Europeans--1316 grammes for adult males of from 20 to 60 years; and the second, dealing with the Annamese, a mean weight of 1341 grammes, almost identical with that of Europeans. For other populations we have only the weight of isolated brains, or of series of three, four, or at most eleven specimens, absolutely insufficient for any conclusions whatever to be drawn, seeing that individual variations are as great in exotic races as among Europeans, to judge by Negroes (1013 to 1587 grammes) and by Annamese (from 1145 to 1450 grammes). Even in the great series of Europeans, surprises await us in comparing the figures. Thus Peacock found an average of 1388 grammes for the English from a series of 28 brains, whilst Boyd finds 1354 grammes from a series of 425 brains. The difference (34 grammes) is greater here than between the brains of Annamese and Europeans, and hardly less than that which we have just found between Negroes and Europeans (45 grammes). For the French the figures are more in agreement. Broca found from the weights of 167 brains an average of 1359 grammes, and Bischoff[104] from 50 brains an average of 1381 grammes; difference, 22 grammes.

Not having at our disposal sufficient data for the weight, let us see if the cranial capacity could not supply them, for we know, since the investigations of Manouvrier,[105] that we have just to multiply by the co-efficient 0.87 the capacity of the cranial cavity to get with reasonable exactitude the weight of the brain which it contained. This is what we learn from the figures of cranial capacity brought together by Topinard,[106] after the necessary corrections, and reduction to cubic measurement by the system of Broca: among Europeans the measurement is 1565 c.c. on an average for men, varying from 1530 c.c. (22 Dutch) to 1601 c.c. (43 Finns). We have in various series the following succession of cranial capacities for the populations of the other parts of the world: the greatest is contained in a series of 26 Eskimo (1583 c.c.), the least that of 36 Australians (1349 c.c.) and of 11 Andamanese (1310 c.c.). Between these two extremes the other populations would be thus arranged in a decreasing order of capacity: 36 Polynesians (1525 c.c.), 18 Javanese (1500 c.c.), 32 Mongols (1504 c.c.), 23 Melanesians (1460 c.c.), 74 Negroes (1441 c.c.), and 17 Dravidians of Southern India (1353 c.c.).

The difference between the highest and lowest of these figures is 255 c.c., a little greater than that which is shown between man and woman in all races. On the other hand, Manouvrier[107] gives the following weights, deduced from cranial capacities: 187 modern Parisians, 1357 grammes; 61 Basques, 1360 grammes; 31 Negroes, 1238 grammes; 23 New Caledonians, 1270 grammes; 110 Polynesians, 1380 grammes; and 50 Bengalis, 1184 grammes; the difference of the two extremes is 196 grammes. Must we then see in these differences the influence of stature and bulk of body, as appears unquestionable in the sexual difference? We are tempted to believe it when we see that the mean weight of the largest brain in Europe has been found among the Scotch (1417 grammes, an average obtained by Reid and Peacock from 157 brains), whose stature is the highest of the human family, and that the mean weight of the Italians, whose average stature is rather small, is only 1308 grammes (from 244 cases weighed by Calori). The Polynesians and the Caucasians,[108] peoples of high stature, also outweigh the Andamanese and the Javanese, of very low stature. However, we see (from weights and cranial capacity) that Negro populations of very high stature, also Australians and New Caledonians of medium stature, have the cerebral weight much smaller than the Eskimo and certain Asiatics of low stature, like the Javanese.

There is here a double influence, that of stature and that of race. We might have introduced a third element--the weight of the body, but it represents too many different things, and may vary according to the degree of stoutness of the individual, the dietary regimen, etc. C. Voit found, when operating on two dogs of nearly equal bulk, that the weight of the brain of the well-fed dog represented 1.1 per cent. of the weight of its body, whilst the brain of the dog which had fasted for twenty-two days represented 1.7 per cent. of the weight of the body.[109] At all events, we cannot deny the influence of the bulk of the active parts of the body on the volume of the brain.[110] But then a new question arises. Is the increase of the volume of the brain made at the cost of the white substance formed solely of conducting-fibres, or of the grey substance formed principally of cells with their prolongations (neurons), that is to say, of the part which is exclusively affected by the psychic processes? This question still waits its solution. It is not the gross weight of the brain, but really the weight of the cortical layer which should be compared in the different races and subjects, in order to judge of the quantity of substance devoted to the psychic functions in each particular case.[111] Before the very delicate weighings of this kind are made, we have a round-about method of ascertaining the quantity of that substance by the superficial area which it occupies. The cerebral cortex, composed of the grey substance, forms on the surface of the brain sinuous folds called _cerebral convolutions_. Now, in brains of equal volume, the greater the surface of the cortex, the more numerous, sinuous, and complicated will be these folds. As the thickness of the grey layer is very much the same in all brains, it is evident that the complexity in the structure of the convolutions corresponds to the increase of the grey substance, and consequently of the psychic force. Now, the little that is known of the cerebral convolutions in different races, and of various subjects in the same race, appears to conform to this deduction. The brains of idiots, of the weak-minded, present very simple convolutions, almost comparable to those of the anthropoid apes, whose brain is like a simplified diagram of the human brain. On the other hand, distinguished personages, great scholars, orators, men of action, exhibit a complexity, sometimes truly remarkable, of _certain_ convolutions. I say expressly certain convolutions, for all these folds, arranged according to a certain plan, common to all men, have not the same value from the physiological point of view. In the grey layer of certain of them are the centres of motor impulses, and of the general sensibility of the body (for example, those which are arranged around the fissure of Rolando, Fig. 25, 2, 2), and only regulate the voluntary movements of the limbs, the trunk and the head; others are connected with different forms of sensibility--visual (Fig. 25, 4), auditory (Fig. 25, 6), gustatory, olfactory, etc. But there are, between the different motor or sensorial regions (_centres of projection_) which take nearly a third of the grey substance of the brain, a great many more convolutions the grey substance of which is connected with no special function (white spots in Fig. 25). What is their purpose? Basing his opinion on the tardy _myelinisation_[112] of the nerve-fibres which terminate in it, subsequent to the birth of the individual and to the myelinisation of the fibres of the sensory and motor centres, Flechsig[113] supposes that these convolutions were designed to enable the different cerebral centres to communicate with each other and to render us conscious of this communication; therefore he has named their grey substance “_centres of association_” (Fig. 25, 1, 3, 5). Without the convolutions, the other centres would remain isolated and condemned to a very restricted activity. Now, as the eminent anatomist Turner[114] has shown so clearly, it is found that the convolutions of the sensory and motor centres do not present any great differences in the brain of a child, a monkey, a Bushman, or of a European man of science, like Gauss; what differentiates these brains is the degree of complexity of the convolutions concerned with association. There, then, is the part of the brain which we want to utilise for the purpose of comparison, reduced by almost a third. But let us suppose that differences of volume and weight are found in these two-thirds of the grey substance. Have we more reason to think that we are approaching the solution of the problem?

(_After Flechsig._)]

It is believed that certain cells of the grey substance only, the great and the little pyramidal-shaped cells, are associated with the psychical functions, and that each of these, forming with its axis-cylinder, dendrons and other branching prolongations what is called a _neuron_, is not in constant connection with, and does not occupy a fixed position once for all in regard to, other similar _neurons_, but may by means of its prolongations place itself alternately in contact with a great number of these.[115] Hence the complexity of the nervous currents resulting from these continual changes of contact. Thus the cerebral activity might not merely be measured by the quantity and the size of the cells of the grey substance, but also by the number and the variety of the habitual contacts which are probably established after an education, a training of the cells. As from the same number of keys of a piano the tyro can produce only a few dissimilar sounds, while an artist elicits varied melodies, so from cerebral cells practically equal in number a savage is only able to extract vague and rudimentary ideas, while a thinker brings out of them intellectual treasures. How far are we, then, from the true appreciation of cerebral work with our rude weighings of an organ in which, with one part that would assuredly help us to the solution of the problem, we weigh at least three other parts having nothing or almost nothing to do with it! And even if we succeeded in finding the number, the weight, and the volume of the neurons, how are we to estimate the innumerable combinations of which they are capable? The problem appears almost insoluble. However, in science we must never lose hope, and--who knows?--perhaps some day the solution of the question will be found, and it will then appear as simple as to-day it appears a matter of course to see through the body with radioscopical apparatus.