The human brain: its structure, physiology and diseases. With a description of the typical forms of brain in the animal kingdom / [Samuel Solly].

  • Solly, Samuel, 1805-1871.
Date:
1847
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The human brain: its structure, physiology and diseases. With a description of the typical forms of brain in the animal kingdom / [Samuel Solly]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and in his reprint of Chenevix’s article on Phrenology, from the Foreign Quarterly Beview, 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 genera¬ tion 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. Grail, 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. Fie 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 Ger¬ many by the writings of some of his pupils. The Doctor himself