Observations on the structure of the brain : comprising an estimate of the claims of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim to discovery in the anatomy of that organ / by John Gordon.

Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the structure of the brain : comprising an estimate of the claims of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim to discovery in the anatomy of that organ / by John Gordon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    of plausibility, and asserted with confidence. Without time or opportunity for experiment or observation, they are willing to compromise ; and to receive that as correct, which looks as if it might be so. In some such way as this alone, can I account ■ for the support, with which the alleged discove- ries of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim are said, in several places, to have been honoured. For I am quite persuaded that no one can consult the his- tory of the science, and afterwards appeal to na- ture, without being convinced, that snch of their statements as are peculiar to them, owe all their plausibility to inaccuracy, to the neglect of some appearances, and to the imagining of others ; and that the descriptions which they have derived from the writings of other anatomists, and which they have sometimes modified but never improved in the transference, make up the whole portion of truth which this new system comprehends. Entertaining this opinion,—satisfied that it must be sanctioned by all attentive inquirers,— and anxious to check, as far as I may, errors of such magnitude in anatomy, I have been encou- raged to lay the following pages before the pro- fession and the public. Little, perhaps, can be 3