An essay on craniology, being the substance of a paper submitted to the Philosophical and Literary Society, Leeds, December 2, 1825 / By Richard Winter Hamilton.

  • Hamilton, Richard Winter, 1794-1848.
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on craniology, being the substance of a paper submitted to the Philosophical and Literary Society, Leeds, December 2, 1825 / By Richard Winter Hamilton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    torem, Dominum Joaimem de Retham Alamanum; tractans de anathomia et diversis infirmitatibiis corporis humani.” And that the modei^n discovery is about three hundred years too late is evident, from the contents of this Tractate. The terms in both are the same, generally ending in iva.— The local seats of the mind are as determi- nately indicated in each. The ancient German speaks of the cellula imaginativa, cellula com¬ munis sensus, cellula estimativa seu cogitativa et rationalis, cellula memorativa, &c. The fable is therefore as obsolete as it is absurd; and presents but the “ Organic Remains’’ of a Craniology exploded more than three centuries ago ! As well might any star-gazer of our time maintain that he discovered Orion, because he witnessed some variety in its constellation,—the ancients having only attributed seyenteen stars to it, the moderns have enlarged it to the Babylonish Number of our Craniologists, thirty-three, and HerscheJl having given it the small addition of one thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven. By a singular law, very different from that which Blackstone tells us “ abhors perpetuities,” this wild conjecture is resuscitated age after age. Proteus could change his forms in the grasp of Hercules,—but this is a low, dull, monotonous repetition, a very ‘‘Monsieur Tonson come again.” The anatomy which this system pretends to have