Observations on the phrenological development of Burke, Hare, and other atrocious murderers; measurements of the heads of the most notorious thieves confined in the Edinburgh Jail and Bridewell, and of various individuals, English, Scotch, and Irish, presenting an extensive series of facts subversive of phrenology / Read before the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh. By Thomas Stone.

  • Stone, Thomas.
Date:
1829
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the phrenological development of Burke, Hare, and other atrocious murderers; measurements of the heads of the most notorious thieves confined in the Edinburgh Jail and Bridewell, and of various individuals, English, Scotch, and Irish, presenting an extensive series of facts subversive of phrenology / Read before the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh. By Thomas Stone. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/88 (page 6)
    The organ of destructiveness in Burke has been ealled large. I proceed to enquire into the correct- into every fissure with as much exactness, though not quite so deeply, as the membranes themselves. Meanwhile, the external table is no more a mere organ of defence than the muscles which cover it ; it is an organ of coaptation or articulation, and accordingly is found to be impressed, elevated, and configurated, entirely, according to the ne- cessities of this adaptation. Hence that line of it which corresponds to the transverse suture of the face is exactly adapted to the bones of the opposite margin of this suture, being thick where they are thick, thin where they are thin, serrated where. they are serrated, and harmonic where they. assume this appearance. It exhibits rio relation to the internal table, till, being again turned inwards along the roof of the orbit, it re-approaches and coincides with it to form the thin edge, which, like another squamous portion, is to ride upon the alee minores of the sphenoid bone. The external table, then, of the frontal bone is in reality a bone of the face. Hence its de- velopment—or growth depends entirely on the growth of the bones of the face ; for it has never been seen narrower or broader than the distance from the external orbitar process of the one malar bone to the other, nor placed so close to the internal table and crista galli, that it was overlapped by the bones of the nose, or by the superior maxillary and malar bones. . It follows, then, from what is said above, that the development of the internal table, and consequently: of the frontal bone, follows the development of the brain; but the development of the external table of the frontal bone follows the de- “velopment of the bones of the face. Now the brain, we have seen, arrives at its full size in the seventh year, which, therefore, is the period for completing the development of the internal table of the frontal bone ; but the bones of the face continue growing to: the twenty-first year, and hence anatomists find the dimensions of the Jrontal sinus go on inereasing to that year ; and the same authors generally find the sinus commence at the seventh year, because that is the time at which the nutritious arteries cease to do more a support its vitality.” The learned anthor then continues (page 598) to oxtata very