Dickens and medicine : an exhibition of books, manuscripts and prints to mark the centenary of his death; with an introduction and bibliography.

  • Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine
Date:
1970
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Dickens and medicine : an exhibition of books, manuscripts and prints to mark the centenary of his death; with an introduction and bibliography. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Prints Phrenological Illustrations, or an Artist's View of the Craniological System of Doctors GallandSpurzheim, by George Cruikshank. London: George Cruikshank, 1827. 28 x 56 cm. [31 Contains six plates, each with five or more coloured etchings Dr Franz Joseph Gall [1758-1828] andJohann Caspar Spurzheim [1776-1832] founded the pseudo-science of phrenology, which taught that a person's character could be read from the bumps on his skull. Their ideas were popular throughout the 19th century and had a certain influence on the progress of research into cerebral localization. At the Phrenologist's. Water-colour by John Leech, c. 1830. 33 x 30 cm. [32 Leech was a medical student (St. Bartholomew's) turned artist. He contributed drawings to Punch and to Dickens's Christmas Carol. Calves' heads and brains or a phrenological lecture. Coloured engraving by J. Lump [sic] from a drawing by L. Bump [sic]. Published for the artist at St. Peter's Alley, Corn Hill, London, September 1826. 25 x 32 cm. [33 The lecturer is probably George Combe [1788-1858] of Edinburgh, author of Elements of Phrenology, 1824, the second edition of which was attacked in the Edinburgh Review for September 1826. The inset picture to the right shows 'Mr Liston as Tony Lumpkin'—an allusion to the surgeon Robert Liston [1794-1847]. If this science be cultivated I doubt not but the time will come when on hiring a servant an examination of the organick manifestations of the mental faculties as developed at the superficies of the pericranium, will supercede the necessity of further enquiry into character. Coloured engraving by W. Taylor. Published by W. Taylor, c. 1820. 20 x 25 cm. [34 Phrenological survey of the head of a [very] Prime Minister, i.e. Sir Robert Peel. (Follit's Phrenology no. 4.), published by J. Follit, c. 1840. 41 x 28 cm. [35 Rare specimen of comparative craniology. An Old Maid's skull phrenologised. Coloured engraving by F. C. Hunt from a drawing by E. F. Lambert. Published by Harrison Isaacs, Charles Street, Soho, c. 1830. 29 x 36 cm. [36 Portrait of John Elliotson M.D. Lithographed from a picture by James Ramsay, c. 1840. 32 x 22 cm. [37 Elliotson [1791-1868] was professor of medicine at University College, London, from 1831 to 1838, and was a very close friend of Dickens.