I think you are totally misreading this. Calves are what you call whale babies also. And eating them makes you look like them. You are what you eat. So much so you look like a cannibal eating baby whale brains. So no.
Nope. Crystal clear in the book.
See chapter 65.
You can download it from The Gutenberg Project for free.
Read it and see if you agree with my take.
I think it’s more of a joke than that. He’s calling the ‘epicures’ idiots, basically, but some of them, by continually eating the calves brains become smart enough to at be able to at least tell their own brain from a whale calve’s.
[...] and every one knows that some young bucks among the epicures, by continually dining upon calves' brains, by and by get to have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf's head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon discrimination.
So, by dining upon whale brains, the "young bucks" themselves acquire more brains... as a result of which they become more and more discriminating... to the point that they can then distinguish a calf's head from their own heads.
Seems clear enough to me: The author is claiming (quite facetiously, I might add!) that dining upon whale brains increases the diner's I.Q.!
And the hypothesis that this passage may have alluded to some neurological disease spread by eating brain matter (vCJD)? Preposterous!
Regards,