July 6, 1815

We owe our awareness of the demarcation of the cortical area of the brain into five lobes to Pierre Gratiolet (July 6, 1815 to February 16 1865), the French scientist, who though " not a practicing physician...[was] unsurpassed in his day as a neuroanatomist...[He] was an elegant stylist and a debater ...[with] aristocratic manners...." His name is associated that of with Francois Leuret (1797 to 1851) as author of a classic French text:

Anatomie comparée du système nerveux considéré dans ses rapports avec l’intelligence,  (1839 (volume 1).

We owe this information to the biography of Paul Broca, Paul Broca, Founder of French Anthropology, Explorer of the Brain (1979), written by Francis Schiller. The story he tells of Gratiolet is fascinating. 

Pierre Gratiolet achieved his status in the French academic world "deputy head of anatomy at the Museum," only after much unlucky circumstance. Gratiolet's father was not just Catholic, and Royalist, but the father had married a titled lady. Thus the wealthy republican Protestants in political ascendance,  found no remunerative occupation for such a sector in French society at the time. Gratiolet , was a lowly intern in neuroanatomy at Salpêtrière Hospital for 19 years. He and his mother lived in genteel poverty until his work was finally recognised with a professorship of zoology to the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Paris. That would have been in 1859 or 1860, by which time his mother was probably dead.

To demonstrate the widespread reputation of this work of comparative anatomy, and its authors, we will quote briefly from Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, (1893) where Gratiolet's book was a headliner act in 1892. Johnson Symington, Esq., M.D., F.R.S.E., retiring Vice-President, ....delivered the following opening address:—

..... I have selected as my subject the Cerebral Convolutions in the Primates—a review of our knowledge of their anatomy and physiology. The intimate association between the cerebral convolutions and the mental processes must ever render their study one of general interest...

In 1771, when this Society was founded, cerebral anatomy was in its infancy.... our knowledge of the ordinary naked-eye anatomy of the human brain was very crude and imperfect. In our own city,  Alexander Monro... a man of European reputation, occupied the Chair of Anatomy in the University. ... in 1783, he published his great work, entitled " Observations on the Structure aud Functions of the Nervous System." In this work Monro made no attempt to show that the convolutions and fissures of the human brain were arranged in any definite or regular manner. In fact, at this time anatomists believed them to be as irregular and indefinite as the coils of the small intestine, or a dish of macaroni....

Three years after the appearance of Monro's "Observations," Vicq dAzyr published in Paris his "Anatomie et Physiologie du Cerveau," .... He doubted the propriety of dividing the cortex into lobes, preferring to map out the convex surface of the cerebral hemispheres into three regions according to their position subjacent to the frontal, parietal, and occipital bones....

In 1810 Gall and Spurzheim published their well-known "Anatomie et Pliysiologie du systeme nerveux en general et du cerveau en particulier. "... [These authors] appear to have been so enamoured by their peculiar phrenological theories as not only to neglect the careful study of the external surface of the brain, but even to distort anatomical facts so as to make them appear to favour their views. Thus, as Leuret... shows, in giving illustrations of the brains of the lion and tiger ...Gall and Spurzheim greatly exaggerate the size of the parts of the brain lying behind the fissure of Sylvius, portions of the cortex to which they attributed the functions of destruction and cunning...."

It is to Leuret and Gratiolet that we are indebted for the first important work on the comparative anatomy of the convolutions, and for perceiving the necessity of an examination of the fissures as well as the convolutions. Leuret... gave beautiful drawings of the brains of numerous mammals, such as the beaver, rabbit, mole,...., hedgehog, squirrel, cat, lion, panther, bear, otter, ferret, sheep, ox, horse, kangaroo, roebuck, deer, wild boar, seal, porpoise, elephant, and papio. The papio was the only monkey that Leuret had studied, but he recognised very clearly the fact that its convolutions are arranged fundamentally the same as those of man. ...., he writes: "It is a very small human brain, or rather a very great brain of the human foetus. The cerebral convolutions are the same in number as in man..."

The five lobes described by Gratiolet in man and the higher apes, although named, with one exception, from the bones with which they were specially related, were based upon fissures in the brain itself. This...Broca.. very justly observes, constituted a very important advance in the study of the convolutions. The five cerebral lobes described by Gratiolet are still, with some modifications, generally accepted by anatomists....