Statistics of phrenology : being a sketch of the progress and present state of that science in the British Islands.

  • 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. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    plircnolngijts, as it is a robbery for one author to steal the ideas of another, and put tlieui forth without acknow- ledgement. It is idle to argue that such a course is taken for the benefit of the public. All such prostration of truth for a temporary advantage, is just setting up the lower feelings in supremacy over Conscientiousness ; and if the ultimate effect of this be not injurious, then farewell to all theories which assume the moral government of the world to be based on immutable laws. Phrenologists have freely censured other persons for neglecting their science, while writing on physiology or on ethical subjects, but what can be said of phrenologists themselves, who are ashamed to acknowledge the sources of their borrowed ideas, and pre- fer the double fault of taking from one party to impose upon another ! The writer lure sjieaks only to the prin- (•ii)le, and as an individual ; fully admitting that Dr. Poole's case has peculiarities which would prevent its strict ap]ilication; and that he would not be j'lstified in casting censures upon others who hold a contra.ry opinion, even while he maintains such opinion to be a moral blunder. In 1823 appeared the first number of the Phrenological Journal, a quarterly periodical, which has been regularly published from that time, and still continues to be so. It forms an useful record of the progress of phrenology, now extending to nine volumes', and including several most valuable essays, with a considerable number of elementary papers, cases, and remarkable facts. It has never been very popular, even among the phrenologists, and has been much complained of as representing the feelings and ideas of its conductors rather than those of the phrenological public ; but it seems to be now meeting with a more cor- dial reception. If not always satisfying individual minds, its readers should remember that such a journal, started in support of an unpopular science, must have entailed on its conductors much personal trouble and pecuniary loss; iu
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