Word: brained
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...final aftermath of the Firpo-Brennan conflict was the removal of Brennan to a New York hospital suffering concussion of the brain. The Evening Mail (New York) promptly published a screed of sympathy, but repeated emphatic assertions that Brennan's injuries were due to his own defensive neglect. Behind the Mail's annoyed murmurs is a widespread suspicion that Brennan made no serious attempt to win the fight...
Just as perplexing is the relation of the human brain to understanding. The ancients thought head measurement indicated intellectual capacity. Later observers remarked that the size of the brain had little to do with the volume of the skull, but still the mass of the convolutions was regarded as somehow significant of ability. But the brains of the greatest weight have belonged indiscriminately to scientists and suicides, mad men and bricklayers. And men of superlative genius have done their work with a modicum of tissue that any self-respecting lunatic would disown...
Still clinging tenaciously, in our material way to ideas of bulk, we may smile knowingly and say, "Ah, it is a question of relativity. The whale has the largest brain, but his body is much larger, in comparison with the dog, the monkey or man. Arrange everything according to the ratio of brain to body, and you have the order of intelligence." Babies, then would outrank us all, confirming Charles Kingsley. And the elephant, who is declared to be one of the craftiest of beasts, would come out nowhere...
...subject, and in order to get a rise out of the women, sent a copy of the letter to the Lucy Stone League, an organization advocating the retention by married women of their maiden names. "Does not your Mr. Atterbury know that women average about five ounces less brain matter than the men; and that the part they lack is the reasoning capacity? Does he not know that if the world had to depend on the inventive or reasoning faculty of women, men would still be sleeping on the plains...
Does Mr. See not know, his victims ask, that brain weight is no test of intelligence, that no one has yet discovered a demonstrable physical measure of brain power, and that so far as biologists and anthropologists can guess, intellectual. capacity is somehow related to the complexity of brain convolutions...