Sir William Hamilton and phrenology : an exposition of phrenology; shewing the complete inefficacy of the objections lately advanced in the Royal Society, and the real grounds on which the system ought to be assailed.

  • Hamilton, William, Sir, 1788-1856.
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sir William Hamilton and phrenology : an exposition of phrenology; shewing the complete inefficacy of the objections lately advanced in the Royal Society, and the real grounds on which the system ought to be assailed. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    glmg to make up for a want of opinions in themselves, by a ready retailing of those of every body else. It is really with some mea- sure of shame that we admit that we were, in some small degree, carried along by the com- mon cry; and that we entered, with so many greater than ourselves, into the rooms of the Koyal Society, with something like a positive hope that a stab was, at last, to be inflicted upon the vitals of, perhaps, the most torment- ing and mis-shapen of all the systems which have lately sprung from the teeming womb of impudence and conjecture. Nor, after all, was this very much to be wondered at. Undoubtedly it was a great step, and no insignificant honour, for a doc- trine like Phrenology—if Phrenology it must be called—which had been draggled for so long a time in the vilest mire of ignorance and ridicule—which, a day or two ago, could number among its open advocates, at least in this country, only a few lounging lawyers and obscure physicians,—and which had even failed to eat its way into notoriety, by the ready, though rather strange, expedients of port and pudding,—to have at last drawn to itself the notice, no matter however hostile, of men whom the voice of the country had in- vested with something like a reasonable ca- pacity to decide upon its merits. Up to the very hour of the present conflict, it was quite enough to answer to the obstreperous advo-