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.

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 Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    an example or two, taken at random, from one of the hundred volumes of error which this race of gibberers have inflicted upon the world.* In a detail of the “ functions” of the five external senses, we are enlightened with such philosophy as the following. “ If an odour make an impression on the olfactory nerve, the impression is immediate- ly found to be agreeable or disagreeable ; and this feeling arises from the constitution of the sense, and the relation established betwixt it and the odorous particles which excite it to activitv.” J This is brief, it will be admitted ; yet we hardly think it will be denied to be sufficient- ly absurd. Here we are informed, that an “ odour,” which is exclusively an affection of the mind, is able to cause an “ impression” on the “ olfactory nerve. This “ impression, which is, of course, a mere change of material particles, carrying within itself no affinity to pain or pleasure, is then made to be “ agreeable or disagreeable:”—and thisfeeling is next made to arise, not from the constitution of the mind, but from that of the organ, here absurdly de- nominated the “ sense,” and of its “ relations” to a physical substance ! In another quarter, weare instructed, that theorgans of sense “pro- duce impressions,” for which, before, we had t * Combe’s Essays.