Somatopsychonoologia: showing that the proofs of body, life and mind ... cannot be deduced from physiology ... being an examination of the controversy concerning life carried on by Laurence [sic], Abernethy, Rennell, and others / By Philostratus [i.e. T.I.M. Forster].

  • Forster, T. (Thomas), 1789-1860.
Date:
[1824]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Somatopsychonoologia: showing that the proofs of body, life and mind ... cannot be deduced from physiology ... being an examination of the controversy concerning life carried on by Laurence [sic], Abernethy, Rennell, and others / By Philostratus [i.e. T.I.M. Forster]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/50 (page 484)
    50MAT0¥TX0N00A0riA. SECTION I.—The Origin of the present Essay. In perusing some recent publications, in which was comprehended a strange controversy between MM. Laurence, Abernethy, and Rennell, on the subject of Organisation, Life, and Mind, I was forcibly struck with the following remark, which almost imme¬ diately suggested itself :—That M. Laurence was accused of pub¬ lishing irreligious doctrines, which, in fact, were not any where discoverable in his works-—that M. Abernethy had opposed to these pretended irreligious doctrines, arguments drawn from a par¬ ticular and obscure physiology—and that M. Rennell had joined himself to the controversy with similar weapons, but had advanced what every good anatomist must know to be misconceived ; having, by a strange misunderstanding of facts recorded by medical writers, actually asserted that the Functions of the human Mind could be carried on in certain cases without the Brain ! It shall be my endeavor in these pages to trace the ideas which were present in my mind during the course of my inquiry into this extraordinary controversy. I perceived that, when M. Laurence’s lectures at the College of Surgeons were first published, a certain party of the Protestant persuasion took alarm, and apparently on the following grounds— that he had indirectly, in the course of his lectures, inculcated the doctrine of Materialism ; and that this doctrine, being once esta¬ blished, would tend to overthrow that of the independent nature of the Soul, and blast the prospect of future existence, entertained by Christians in common with religious persons of many other persua¬ sions. I was startled at the idea ; for let the doctrine of Mate¬ rialism be established ever so firmly, it would not afford the slightest proof, to believers, of the destruction of the Soul at the death of the Body. We are made conscious by memory of per-