3 Books By Laurence Sterne. Laurence Sterne
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and sitting dabbling, like a tad-pole all day long, both summer and winter, in a puddle,--or in a liquid of any kind, how thick or thin soever, he would say, shocked his imagination; he would scarce give the doctrine a hearing.
What, therefore, seemed the least liable to objections of any, was that the chief sensorium, or head-quarters of the soul, and to which place all intelligences were referred, and from whence all her mandates were issued,--was in, or near, the cerebellum,--or rather somewhere about the medulla oblongata, wherein it was generally agreed by Dutch anatomists, that all the minute nerves from all the organs of the seven senses concentered, like streets and winding alleys, into a square.
So far there was nothing singular in my father's opinion,--he had the best of philosophers, of all ages and climates, to go along with him.--But here he took a road of his own, setting up another Shandean hypothesis upon these corner-stones they had laid for him;--and which said hypothesis equally stood its ground; whether the subtilty and fineness of the soul depended upon the temperature and clearness of the said liquor, or of the finer net-work and texture in the cerebellum itself; which opinion he favoured.
He maintained, that next to the due care to be taken in the act of propagation of each individual, which required all the thought in the world, as it laid the foundation of this incomprehensible contexture, in which wit, memory, fancy, eloquence, and what is usually meant by the name of good natural parts, do consist;--that next to this and his Christian-name, which were the two original and most efficacious causes of all;--that the third cause, or rather what logicians call the Causa sina qua non, and without which all that was done was of no manner of significance,--was the preservation of this delicate and fine-spun web, from the havock which was generally made in it by the violent compression and crush which the head was made to undergo, by the nonsensical method of bringing us into the world by that foremost.
--This requires explanation.
My father, who dipped into all kinds of books, upon looking into Lithopaedus Senonesis de Portu difficili, (The author is here twice mistaken; for Lithopaedus should be wrote thus, Lithopaedii Senonensis Icon. The second mistake is, that this Lithopaedus is not an author, but a drawing of a petrified child. The account of this, published by Athosius 1580, may be seen at the end of Cordaeus's works in Spachius. Mr. Tristram Shandy has been led into this error, either from seeing Lithopaedus's name of late in a catalogue of learned writers in Dr..., or by mistaking Lithopaedus for Trinecavellius,--from the too great similitude of the names.) published by Adrianus Smelvgot, had found out, that the lax and pliable state of a child's head in parturition, the bones of the cranium having no sutures at that time, was such,--that by force of the woman's efforts, which, in strong labour-pains, was equal, upon an average, to the weight of 470 pounds avoirdupois acting perpendicularly upon it;--it so happened, that in 49 instances out of 50, the said head was compressed and moulded into the shape of an oblong conical piece of dough, such as a pastry-cook generally rolls up in order to make a pye of.--Good God! cried my father, what havock and destruction must this make in the infinitely fine and tender texture of the cerebellum!--Or if there is such a juice as Borri pretends--is it not enough to make the clearest liquid in the world both seculent and mothery?
But how great was his apprehension, when he farther understood, that this force acting upon the very vertex of the head, not only injured the brain itself, or cerebrum,--but that it necessarily squeezed and propelled the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, which was the immediate seat of the understanding!--Angels and ministers of grace defend us! cried my father,--can any soul withstand this shock?--No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tattered as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,--all perplexity,--all confusion within-side.
But when my father read on, and was let into the secret, that when a child was turned topsy-turvy, which was easy for an operator to do, and was extracted by the feet;--that instead of the cerebrum being propelled towards the cerebellum, the cerebellum, on the contrary, was propelled simply towards the cerebrum, where it could do no manner of hurt:--By heavens! cried he, the world is in conspiracy to drive out what little wit God has given us,--and the professors of the obstetric art are listed into the same conspiracy.--What is it to me which end of my son comes foremost into the world, provided all goes right after, and his cerebellum escapes uncrushed?
It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of great use.
When my father was gone with this about a month, there was scarce a phaenomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he could not readily solve by it;--it accounted for the eldest son being the greatest blockhead in the family.--Poor devil, he would say,--he made way for the capacity of his younger brothers.--It unriddled the observations of drivellers and monstrous heads,--shewing a priori, it could not be otherwise,--unless... I don't know what. It wonderfully explained and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sunshine, &c.--which for aught he knew, might as well rarefy and dilute the faculties of the soul into nothing, by one extreme,--as they are condensed in colder climates by the other;--but he traced the affair up to its spring-head;--shewed that, in warmer climates, nature had laid a lighter tax upon the fairest parts of the creation;--their pleasures more;--the necessity of their pains less, insomuch that the pressure and resistance upon the vertex was so slight, that the whole organization of the cerebellum was preserved;--nay, he did not believe, in natural births, that so much as a single thread of the net-work was broke or displaced,--so that the soul might just act as she liked.
When my father had got so far,--what a blaze of light did the accounts of the Caesarian section, and of the towering geniuses who had come safe into the world by it, cast upon this hypothesis? Here you see, he would say, there was no injury done to the sensorium;--no pressure of the head against the pelvis;--no propulsion of the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, either by the os pubis on this side, or os coxygis on that;--and pray, what were the happy consequences? Why, Sir, your Julius Caesar, who gave the operation a name;--and your Hermes Trismegistus, who was born so before ever the operation had a name;--your Scipio Africanus; your Manlius Torquatus; our Edward the Sixth,--who, had he lived, would have done the same honour to the hypothesis:--These, and many more who figured high in the annals of fame,--all came side-way, Sir, into the world.
The incision of the abdomen and uterus ran for six weeks together in my father's head;--he had read, and was satisfied, that wounds in the epigastrium, and those in the matrix, were not mortal;--so that the belly of the mother might be opened extremely well to give a passage to the child.--He mentioned the thing one afternoon to my mother,--merely as a matter of fact; but seeing her turn as pale as ashes at the very mention of it, as much as the operation flattered his hopes,--he thought it as well to say no more of it,--contenting himself with admiring,--what he thought was to no purpose to propose.
This was my father Mr. Shandy's hypothesis; concerning which I have only to add, that my brother Bobby did as great honour to it (whatever he did to the family) as any one of the great heroes we spoke of: For happening not only to be christened, as I told you, but to be born too, when my father was at Epsom,--being moreover my mother's first child,--coming into the world with his head foremost,--and turning out afterwards a lad of wonderful slow parts,--my father spelt all these together into his opinion: and as he had failed at one end,--he was determined to try the other.
This was not to be expected from one of the sisterhood, who are not easily to be put out of their way,--and was therefore one of my father's great reasons in favour of a man of science, whom he could better deal with.
Of all men in the world, Dr. Slop was the fittest for my father's purpose;--for though this new-invented forceps was the armour he had proved, and what he maintained to be the safest instrument of deliverance, yet, it seems, he had scattered a word or two in his book, in favour of the very thing which ran in my father's fancy;--tho' not with a view to the soul's good in extracting by the feet, as was my father's system,--but for reasons merely