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improvements which have been made in our mode of studying the brain. For my own part, I most cheerfully acknowledge, that the interest which I derived from the lectures of Dr. Spurzheim at St. Thomas's Hospital, about the years 1822 and 1823, has been the inciting cause of all the labour which for above twenty years I have at intervals devoted to this subject. I believe that to Mr. Green, in his Dissector's Manual, is due the honour of having first given to the English student an abstract of Gall and Spurzheim's method of dissecting the brain. Mr. South, in his edition, enlarged it considerably. Believing that, in the first edition of this work, I had unintentionally neglected to do Gall and Spurzheim full justice, I got my friend Mr. Streeter, of Harpur-street, who is well acquainted with this subject, to give me a short historical account of the order in which their labours appeared before the world.

20, Harpur-street, April 1847.

MY DEAR SIR,-As you manifested in the Preface to the First Edition of your Work on the Anatomy of the Brain, what Gall in one of the latest of his written paragraphs termed "une tendance singulière que manifestent beaucoup de personnes, d'attribuer notres découvertes à d'autres, par exemple à Reil," &c., I venture to direct your attention to this error, into which you have fallen, in common with most of the English writers on the anatomy and physiology of this most curious and difficult part of the human frame. I am the more induced to do so, because Dr. Spurzheim himself directed my attention to this error when Mr. Herbert Mayo was engaged in his courses of Lectures on the Nervous System, at the Royal College of Surgeons, nearly twenty years ago, and fell into the same mistake. What Gall has written in its refutation, may be found in the 8vo edition of his work, "Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau," Vol. vi. p. 490. What Spurzheim, in a pamphlet entitled, "Examination of the Objections made in Britain against the Doctrines of Gall and Spurzheim," Edinburgh, 1817, p. 50-54; in the Preface to his " Anatomy of the Brain," 1826;

and in his reprint of Chenevix's article on Phrenology, from the Foreign Quarterly Review, 1830, Appendix. I would, however, direct your attention to the earliest notices of the discoveries and proceedings of these illustrious men in the English medical periodicals-publications which, as they were not so numerous as in our day, may be fairly imagined not to have been entirely overlooked by the co-existing generation of men.

The earliest notice that I am aware of, that appeared in this country, was that in the Medical and Physical Journal, for 1800 (Vol. iv. p. 50). It refers, however, exclusively to craniological ideas :

:

“Mr. F. J. Gall, at Vienna, has finished a most elaborate work on the Exercise of the Brain, and on the possibility of recognising the several Faculties and Propensities from the Construction and Form of the Head and Skull. Mr. Geisweiler, of Parliament-street, has in his possession a part of the manuscript and several drawings, finished in the most curious and elegant style, deserving the attention of the curious. The Author intends to publish the work at the same time, both in England and Germany."

This, you will observe, is before Dr. Spurzheim was associated with him. The next medical notice appears in the October number of that Journal for 1805 (Vol. xiv. p. 327). The contributor, Dr. Arneman, one of their editors, speaks of Dr. Gall as one "that may justly be ranked amongst the most extraordinary men of the present age." He states that their Prussian Majesties, the Physicians of the Court, all the medical professors, and among them the Nestor of the present Anatomists, Dr. Walter, and almost every body who makes a claim to a liberal education, attended Dr. Gall's Lectures. He divides the doctrine into two parts-1st, The Doctrine of the Brain; 2ndly, The Doctrine of the Skull-and gives an abstract of both. In the March number for 1806 (Vol. xv. p. 201), there is another notice, which states that the craniology of Dr. Gall was the favourite topic of the German literati, during the summer of 1805, at almost every university and capital of the Northern provinces of Germany; that Gall employed himself in researches on the conformation and anatomy of the human brain. The Government of Vienna, however, forbade his Lectures. "But this did not stop his inquiries; students in physic and men of research came from every part to procure information, which he never refused, and his doctrine was soon spread all over Germany by the writings of some of his pupils. The Doctor himself

prepared a work, illustrated with copper-plates, in which all his striking observations on comparative anatomy and the dissection of the brain were to be laid before the public. Subscriptions for it were opened, and completed in a short time. But previous to its publication, the Doctor resolved to make a circuit of all the Northern universities and capitals of Germany, in order that the Literati and Professors might hear and scrutinize the Lectures which he intended to deliver in every place wherein he should make any residence."

In the July number of the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal for 1806, will be found a very careful but concise abstract of Gall's Examination of the Brain, abstracted from all the psychical views of its author, from the pen of Professor Rosenmuller of Leipsic. In the same number, there is also a review of Professor Bischoff and Hufeland's Account of Dr. Gall's Cranioscopy, which was looked upon as a correct epitome of Gall's Lectures, and of the objections raised against his demonstrations of the brain, and opinions, by Professor Walter and others. Copies of the abstract by Rosenmuller, and of the review of Bischoff, I inclose, but shall be glad to have them returned at your convenience. Other notices exist in the general periodicals of the day, but these are sufficient to show that Gall and Spurzheim's public dissections and demonstrations of the brain preceded those of Reil in Germany, and it is curious to observe the influence they exerted in leading Reil to publish on this subject in 1807; Baron Cuvier, in France, in 1809; and Sir Charles Bell, whose first pamphlet was circulated only among private friends, and entitled, "Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain." The labours of these eminent men, and their successors, have indeed only been successful in carrying out the details of Gall and Spurzheim's leading general principle, that the nervous system was not an unit but an aggregation of systems, as numerous as the functions, intellectual, emotional or physical, of which it is the organized instrument.

S. Solly, Esq.

Believe me to remain, yours, very truly,

J. S. STREETER.

There is one point regarding the physiology of the brain to which I must here advert. It is Dr. Wigan's theory of the duality of the mind. The facts and reasoning he has brought to bear on the subject are most interesting, and

his arguments are well worthy of attention. But to do it justice, and at the same time to criticise it judiciously, would have occupied more space than I could allot to the subject.

I have but few words to say regarding the pathological section. I added it, because I believed it would render the work more useful, and I hope it may prove so, notwithstanding the narrow limits to which I have been obliged to confine it.

With regard to the Wood-cuts, I can vouch for their general accuracy: they are all, unless stated to the contrary, from drawings of my own, or made under my immediate inspection. Some of them I drew on the wood. To Mr. Kearney the artist, and Mr. Branston the engraver, my thanks are due for the trouble they have taken to execute them in accordance with my wishes.

1, St. Helen's Place, Aug. 25th, 1847.

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