The duality of the mind : read at the meeting of the Psychological Society of Great Britain, May 12, 1875 / by Mr. Serjeant Cox.
- Edward William Cox
- Date:
- [1875]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The duality of the mind : read at the meeting of the Psychological Society of Great Britain, May 12, 1875 / by Mr. Serjeant Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![Dr. Wigan found tlio same fate as Dr. Gall. The Scientists of his day excommunicated him. The abundant facts by which he supported his arguments, his experiences as a physician, were declared to be impostures or illusions, his deductions from them fallacies. They would not con- descend to inquire if his asserted facts were true, because they could not be true—they were inconsistent with the established principles of Physiology and Mental Science. Had we not whole libraries of books by the highest autho- rities based upon the assumption that the mind is a metaphysical abstraction—a thing without parts, or shape, or substance, wholly incorporeal in essence and in associa- tion ? Were these big books to be reduced to waste paper by a new quackery, and the authority of all the great M.D.’s destroyed by facts and phenomena noted by a little M.D. ? Were the arguments of so many philosophers to be answered by reference to the sayings and doings of madmen and somnambulists ? “For our own parts,” said the Scientists of that day, as some of the Scientists of our own day say now, “We will not waste our time in looking at facts and phenomena, which cannot be accepted in opposition to established principles of science and known laws of nature, and which, therefore, even if we beheld we should not believe ? ” So Dr. Wigan was put down in his turn. But truth is immortal. A fact may be suppressed; it cannot be killed. It will turn up again and again, and in the end it will prevail. This fact of the Duality of the brain and consequently of the Mind, announced by Gall, proved by Wigan, was long after confirmed partially by Ferrier, and now is proclaimed boldly, positively, and without reserve by Brown-Sequard, hitherto held to be the foremost in his Science, but who, perhaps, will at once be deposed as labouring under “partial insanity,” or having a natural [75]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2244385x_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
