ABSTRACT
One of the reasons for the lack of knowledge of the mental functions of the brain is that too much reliance has been placed on the experiments performed in laboratories on the brains of living animals . For fifty years ( 1 82 1-7 I ) medical opinion and the opinion of philosophers and psychologists was dominated by the results of FLOURENs's experiments, which seemed to prove that the brain is a uniform organ as regards its functions. Flourens held that the whole of the cerebral mass is homogeneous, that nothing prevents the functions of one part being transferred to another, and that so long as one little part is left, the intellectual faculties and consciousness will still remain. (Experimental Researches into the Properties and Functions of the Nervous System in Vertebrate Animals, Paris, 1 822-a report which had obtained the prize of the French Academy.)
Flourens took a live pigeon for his investigation, and removed the brain in successive stages. After cutting the "soul" from his fowl bit by bit (the expression used by his contemporaries) , he found that the mental faculties and consciousness were preserved, and from his observation of a pigeon's brain he drew the de duction that man's cerebral mass, too, was homogeneous in function. Later, he used other low-grade animals, and applied small metal balls to the surface of the brain, letting them slowly sink through. The balls, in every case, forced their way, in course of time, right through to the base of the brain, without resulting in any disturbance of function whatever. After these ingenious experiments, there was no longer any question that the brain acted as a single organ, and contained no centres of special function.
