Barometric Cadavers

Doctors, members of the American College of Physicians, laughed reminiscently in Cleveland where they held their annual meeting last week, as Dr. Thomas Wingate Todd, professor of anatomy at Western Reserve University medical school, reminded them of their student horror of corpses. Said Dr. Todd: "The medical student comes into a new environment which is saturated with strange smells and weird noises. For his first few months at school he is worried a great deal by the nonsense fed to him by the sophomores about the dreadful things that are going to happen to him."

Dr. Todd, curious observer, wondered what effect freshmen trepidations had on freshmen stomachs; found: "When the freshman is in this unsettled emotional state we have a look at his internal mechanism. And just before he steps up to the fluoroscope, we heighten the effect by springing a booby trap on him -- a loose board that makes a loud bang. In that emotional condition we find that his stomach has crawled up the length of several vertebrae. A year later, as a sophomore, we find his stomach back in place, where it ought to be. When you hear a woman describe her fright by saying, 'My heart came right up in my mouth,' she is really describing the cavortings of her stomach."

But Dr. Todd had a more pungent report to make from his anatomical laboratory findings. He told it to the College of Physicians as they dined. Since 1913 he has been measuring the brains of corpses brought to the refrigerating room of Western Reserve medical school. These cadavers had been poor people, suicides, social derelicts.

Between 1913 and 1917 the average size of these laboratory brains was "quite constantly within ten cubic centimeters of 1,480."* In 1918 the Cleveland average fell to 1,410 c. c. "During that [War] year none but the veriest fool was left destitute; the others were all in the Army or earning good wages in civilian life. . . . In 1919, when industrial stagnation set in, the average brain volume of our social failures rose to 1,520 c.c. That looked serious to us and with great interest we read the prognosis of bankers and captains of industry regarding the future. According to predictions the situation improved in 1920, and our mean brain volume sank once more to near the pre-War level."

In 1921 business and industrial depression again set in, and Dr. Todd's brains averaged 1,540 c.c. He told the dining doctors: "Here were the men who could think for themselves, who knew and resented their fate. The pneumonia of the shiftless, the tuberculosis of the overwearied struggler, the heart disease of the adventurer, no longer acted alone as our receiving agents. Instead, men shot themselves or each other; threw themselves into the lake [Lake Erie]; poisoned themselves with morphine or raisin jack; or perished of cold, listlessly lost in despair." Late in 1922 smaller brains came to the anatomy rooms. "[Industrial] relief had come; though it was not apparent to the city, we knew that the end was in sight. Hope was restored again in those whose nervous systems had been shattered by defeat." In effect, Dr. Todd is a business prognosticator.

His great point made, Dr. Todd played with incidental observations: "Of two heads of the same size one might have as much as 200 c. c. more brains than the other. . . . It is not quantity but quality that matters. It is not the quality of the whole, but of the last small wineglassful. Taking mean values, 1,480 c.c. are needed for a fool, 1,500 for an honest man. And on the average, a lady's cocktail saves us from inanity."

After hearing these and sundry other speeches, after visiting Cleveland hospitals and clinics, the American College of Physicians selected New Orleans for the 1928 meeting; chose Dr. Charles Martin of Montreal to be president-elect. Dr. Frank Smithies of Chicago became president for this year.

*16.39 c.c. equal 1 cu. in. Human brains average 1,500 c.c.; those of highly intelligent persons average 1,550 c.c. -