Day 79

Broca, P. (1824—1880)

We might ask if the small size of the female brain depends exclusively on the small size of her body. ... But we must not forget that women are, on the average, a little less intelligent than men, a difference which is, nonetheless real. We are therefore permitted to suppose that the relatively small size of the female brain depends in part upon her physical inferiority and in part upon her intellectual inferiority.

‘Sur le volume et la forme du cerveau suivant les individus et suivant les races’ Bulletin Société d’Anthropologie Paris 2 (1861) p. 153. Cited by S.J. Gould in The Mismeasure of Man (Pelican Books 1984) p. 104.