Thirty-third annual report of the directors of James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics, near Perth. June, 1860.

  • James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thirty-third annual report of the directors of James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics, near Perth. June, 1860. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    taincd a thousand guests, of whom only one had died, whereas the mortality for the rest of the town had been at the rate of twelve per thousand. On this kind of logic, however, Dr Farre tells us that a French minister pronounced prisons to be the healthiest places in the world; and an English inspector gravely affirmed, that in very few situations in life is an adult less likely to die than in a well conducted prison! ” * Phrenology is somewhat profuse and confident in its promises of Relations of assistance in the diagnosis of insanity, and in the classification of psyco- tohpsychoSy pathies. With a view to test how far these promises have been fulfilled, pathy’ or are capable of being fulfilled, and in continuation of the investigations on the size of the head in the insane, published in our Annual Report for 1858 [pp. 16, et seq.], we have caused a careful phrenological exami- investiga- nation of the head to be made in the cases of 173 patients (84 males “Phrenoiogi and 89 females) labouring under almost every form or phase of insanity Sent6” of°P [as appears from Phrenological Table VII. hereto appended]. Our IIeads- standard of comparison was a bust, phrenologically mapped into “organs” phrenoiogi- in accordance with the seventh edition of Combe’s “ Elements of Phre- ards.tand nology” [1850], and procured from Alexander Stewart, Phrenological Museum, 1, Surgeon Square, Edinburgh. Our further guides were the “ Principles of Phrenology,” by Sidney Smith [Edinburgh, Tait, 1838]: the article “Phrenology,” in the last edition of Chambers’s “ Information for the People:”—and the section on “ Phrenology” in George Cornbe’s “ Constitution of Man ” [Edinburgh, John Anderson, jun., 1828]. We have “nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice:” we have endeavoured simply to weigh Phrenology in the balance of rigorous investigation—to test its value as an adjuvant to Psycopathy by the recognized standards of phrenologists : we have inves¬ tigated the subject patiently and laboriously, and as thoroughly as our opportunities have permitted. In order that bias or preconceived ideas [had they existed, which they did not] might not interfere with the honest carrying out of the inquiry, the phrenological examination or analysis of the head was confided to one of the medical officers of the Institution, while the statistics were elaborated and the general con¬ clusions drawn up by another,—the one working altogether independ¬ ently of the other, and neither having any conception of the general results of their individual or collective researches or calculations. We frankly admit that neither of us was a professed or experienced phreno¬ logist ; we do not claim perfection either in our mode of investigating or in our competency to investigate. But phrenologists themselves infom us—and, moreover, it is one of their boasts—that no special quali¬ fications in the student are requisite to master the principles or practice of Phrenology; and we submit that, with the aid before specified, any * Orr’s “ Circle of the Sciences,” vol. i. p. 25. D