Statistics of phrenology: being a sketch of the progress and present state of that science in the British Islands / By Hewett C. Watson.

  • Hewett Watson
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Statistics of phrenology: being a sketch of the progress and present state of that science in the British Islands / By Hewett C. Watson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    published (Physiology, iii. 263.) a very different and utterly erroneous statement respecting the discovery of phreno- logy, which Dr. Elliotson has easily refuted (Phrenological Journal, v. 96.). In Britain, a few unimportant notices of Gall’s labours appeared very early in the present century ; amongst which the attempted refutation in the Edinburgh Review, in the year 1803, may be particularly instanced. This early condemnation of Gall’s observations is attributed to the late Dr. Thomas Brown, of metaphysical celebrity ; and we need not see much ground for surprise that a meta- physician should reject the mental philosophy of Gall, then so exceedingly incomplete, and which Dr. Brown had learned only second-hand through an imperfect channel. Indeed, it is stated that he afterwards orally expressed a much more favourable opinion. In the year 1806, as appears by the Christian Pioneer, the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal contained an unflattering notice of Gall; and in the year 1809 the disingenuous report of the French Institute, delivered a few months previously, was translated and printed in the same journal. It does not fall under the purpose of this volume to enter into any consideration of a report made by a foreign body ; but having been copied into an English journal of science, it may be observed that the report. is now generally admitted to have been extremely unjust towards Gall and Spurzheim as anatomists and physiolo- gists, and to have been dictated by the fear of incurring Napoleon's displeasure ; that despot having “rated the wise men of his land for allowing themselves to be taught chemistry by an Englishman*, and anatomy by a German.” By these and other unfavourable notices, the public press of Britain created an unfriendly feeling towards the founders of phrenology, and prepared the public to con- demn the doctrines as unsound, and to ridicule them as * Sir Humphry Davy. B2
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