Abstract
Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) is best remembered for his belief that bumps on the skull reflect the growth of small, underlying brain areas, though among some historians, more positively for introducing the concept of cortical localization of function. All but one of Gall’s 27 settled-upon cortical faculties involved the cerebral cortex, the exception being his most primitive faculty, reproductive instinct, which he associated with the cerebellar cortex. This article examines Gall’s earlier subcortical organs, with an emphasis on why he associated the cerebellum with this drive. It draws from accounts by several physicians, who attended his Vienna lectures or heard him speak in Germany and the Netherlands in 1805–1806 [i.e., before he published his finalized list in his Anatomie et Physiologie (1810–1819)]. These early accounts show that early on he localized at least four faculties in brainstem structures, including a reproductive drive in the cerebellar cortex. He based his structure–function association primarily on cranial differences between men and women, and what he found in males and females of other species, although cranioscopy was not his sole method. It is also shown that, in opposition to his cerebellar–reproductive drive association, Marie Jean Pierre Flourens linked coordinated skeletal movements to the cerebellum after conducting lesion experiments, mainly on birds. Flourens did not design his experiments to challenge Gall’s ideas on localization of function, but they did just that. Gall responded that ablation methods lack precision and lead to misguided conclusions. How Gall continued to associate the reproductive instinct with the cerebellar cortex, even after deleting his other brainstem-based associations from his faculties of mind, tells us much about him and the faith he had in his methods and doctrine.
Highlights
Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828; Figure 1) was born in Tiefenbronn, a small German town, and it was expected that he would enter the priesthood, he opted to pursue medicine in Strasbourg and Vienna
In contrast to earlier writers, Bischoff provided more of Gall’s evidence for this structure–function association, writing: It has already been observed that as sexual passion arises, this part of the brain grows in disproportion to the other parts; and when, by castration, the purposes of nature in the formation of this organ are defeated, we find that this organ ceases to develope [sic] and perfect itself
Reproductive instinct was not his most primitive faculty when he began, it emerged as his first faculty of mind before he entered Paris in 1807, where he promoted his new science for the rest of his life
Summary
Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828; Figure 1) was born in Tiefenbronn, a small German town, and it was expected that he would enter the priesthood, he opted to pursue medicine in Strasbourg and Vienna (for Gall’s biography, see Finger and Eling, 2019). After he completed his medical degree in 1785, he immediately started a private practice in a fashionable part of Vienna. More than just wanting to treat patients, he aspired to make a name for himself in science
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