Woman physiologically considered as to mind, morals, marriage, matrimonial slavery, infidelity and divorce / by Alexander Walker.

  • Walker, Alexander, 1779-1852.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Woman physiologically considered as to mind, morals, marriage, matrimonial slavery, infidelity and divorce / by Alexander Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    39/440 (page 11)
    It is necessary, therefore, that, in such cases, both parents should have both forehead and back- head proportionally well developed, or, which is still better, that both children should have the forehead from the same parent and the backhead from the other. In the present case, the mother, as usual, has a smaller head than the father, and all its dimen- sions are strikingly similar—in every direction differing only by half an inch. Now, seeing that each parent gives half the cerebral organization of each child, it is evident that, had no new cause been brought into action, as great an equality of general dimensions should have ensued as is seen in the 1st & 2d cases, where both children are of the same sex. That this is not the case, can be ascribed only to the difference of sex—the sole new cause brought into action; and nothing I think can more clearly show that the size and the power of the brain or chief organ of mind are na- turally less in woman than in man—that there is a sex of brain and of mind. The enlargement of the forehead in the female, so clearly exemplified in this case—an enlargement always taking place while all other parts diminish in size, is quite as remarkable, and is scarcely less important as a sexual difference. In the mental or thinking system generally con-