The power of the human brain is practically immeasurable. Aside from automatically performing bodily functions that are necessary for survival, the mental capacity of the brain is capable of retaining things from vast lingual information to countless mathematical equations and rules. The brain is so powerful that it can even take the retained information learned and apply or relate this knowledge to self-formulated conclusions or notions. This higher level of thinking, however, does not necessarily apply to all humans. As was the case in Roger Shattuck's story, The Forbidden Experiment, when the main character, Victor, seemed to have lost access to his cerebral cortex, or higher-brain, and all of the vast potential of power it possessed. Like a laboratory guinea pig, he was captured from the wild outdoors which he spent his childhood and pre-pubescent years in and was forced to conform to a world engulfed by rules of society. And as foreshadowing may assume, it must indeed be difficult for people who have lost access to their higher-brain to adapt to a civilized lifestyle.
In his accounts from January 9, 1800, P.J. Bonnaterre writes, "Before dawn a remarkable creature came out of the woods He was human in bodily form and walked erect. Everything else about him suggested an animal."" As seen later, this human being was actually a young boy of about eleven or twelve years, who could not speak, wore a tattered shirt as his only clothing, ate only potatoes, and relieved himself wherever he pleased. He was given the name "Victor,"" or as some later came to know him as, "the Savage."" Though physically he seemed to be just like any other boy of his age, he did have a healed-over wound about an inch and a half long under his chin. This may suggest that somebody abandoned him in the woods and turned a weapon against him to ensure that he would not live. In any case, he basically grew up in the forest, generally cut off from all outside, human, influences as relied strictly on his built-in sense of instinctive survival provided by the lower-brain.
