The skull and brain : their indications of character and anatomical relations.

  • Morgan, Nicholas
Date:
[1875]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The skull and brain : their indications of character and anatomical relations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    This is the natural inference. How far this is borne out by fact the sequel will show. Sir John Forbes, in the British and Foreign Medical Review, remarks, “ That anti-phrenologists were bound to collect an equal mass of contradictory facts, if they seriously meant to refute the doctrines of phreno- logy.” To this Mr. Lewes replies :—“ The trouble was great, the motive was not sufficiently strong !” Anti-phrenologists have condemned the subject, that is enough. “Besides,” says he, “ordinary observa- tion supplied them with instances of failure too unequivocal to permit their acceptance of phreno- logy, and they left to others the onerous burthen of collecting an imposing array of facts or counter- evidence.” This paragraph is singularly contradic- tory, and more especially so when taken in con- nection with the fact as assumed by Mr. Lewes of M. Piesse not needing to trouble himself much in the collection of striking examples. First, we are told the trouble was great, and the motive too weak, to induce anti-phrenologists to follow the advice of Sir John Forbes; and second, that ordinary obser- vation supplied numerous instances of failure : Mr. Lewes continues, “ M. Piesse has supplied us with no great array of facts, but those selected by him are sufficiently significant, and make up in quality for their deficiency in quantity.” Here M. Piesse is said to have selected significant facts, but in the preceding paragraph he is said to have taken them as they arose. Those selected facts appear
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