A HUNDRED AND twenty-five years ago， a scientific orthodoxy<br >was being slowly spatchcocked together to provide for its age a<br >climate of opinion that was to linger long after. At the time<br >virtually nothing was known about the human brain， according<br >to the contemporary first edition of Gray s Anatomy， except that<br >people of intelligence had heavier and more capacious brains<br >than idiots. This was not a lot to go on. But it encouraged a pride<br > 0fbrain scientists， among them Samuel George Morton in Phila-<br > delphia and Paul Broca in Paris， to scurry through morgues and<br > infirmaries and collections of old bones and to measure there，<br > with seeds and shot and rule and ribbon， a wide variety of<br > ~human skulls. They arrived， virtually to a man， at the same<br > sonorous， reverberating conclusion. Women had a good deal<br > less native intelligence than men. In a pecking order achieved<br > through the measurement of brains， and even the hat sizes of<br > dead geniuses， white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males led the<br > field， followed by other northern Europeans， then Slavs， then<br > Jews， and， a long way further back， Negroes and savages bring-<br > ~o 23<br ><br >