MEDICAL AND SURGICAL ASSOCIATION. 29 



has been fostered and nurtured within the precincts of its capital, by 

 the noble utility of its objects, by the admirable manner in which they 

 have been followed up, and by the excellence of the effects which have 

 already been obtained from the judicious arrangements taken to ensure 

 that combination of intellect and acquirement necessary for success, has 

 already taken a high rank amongst the numerous societies for the pro- 

 motion of science of which this country has just reason to boast. 



The Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, to the Transactions 

 of which we are about to call the attention of our readers, was founded 

 at Worcester in the year 1832, and owes its formation, as we are given 

 to understand, to the unwearied exertions of Dr. Hastings, one of 

 its secretaries. By a steady perseverance in the course originally 

 marked out, and by a continuance of these exertions, it has arrived 

 at a degree of prosperity which we will venture to assert no institu- 

 tion of a similar kind ever attained in so short a period of time. It 

 is not our intention to enter here upon the history of this society, 

 though, we trust, upon some future occasion, some individual better 

 qualified than ourselves for the task, — some one of the many eminent 

 men who are already enrolled among its numbers, will favour us with a 

 document of so much interest. Of the nature of its objects a competent 

 idea may be formed from the volumes before us. Most of the papers which 

 these volumes contain relate exclusively to the branches of scientific 

 enquiry, for the cultivation of which the association was more especially 

 established, and of these, though we have reason to know that much 

 valuable matter is contained in them, we do not profess to give any 

 account ; but there are others which, though intimately connected with 

 the science of medicine, are no less so with general literature. Of this 

 nature are, — a paper on the Theory of the Frontal Sinus, by the late Dr. 

 Milligan ; — Dr. Maiden's Essay on the Reciprocal Influence of the Mind 

 and Body of Man in Health and Disease ; — Dr. Conolly's Proposal for the 

 Establishment of County Natural History Societies ; — the Observations 

 upon Sleep, by Dr. Wakefield Scott; — and the Biographical Memoirs of 

 the late Dr. Thackeray, of Bedford, in the first volume : — the Topographical 

 Papers of Drs. Forbes, Carrick, and Symonds, and Mr. Watson ; — the 

 Continuation of Dr. Scott's Observations on Sleep ; — and the Memoirs of 

 the lamented Dr. Darwall, in the second. Upon the present occa- 

 sion we shall confine our remarks to the Phrenological Paper from 

 the pen of the late Dr. Milligan. In selecting this Essay, we are perfectly 

 aware that we run considerable risk of disturbing the repose and 

 arousing the ire of that very sensitive race — those exquisite specimens 

 of the irritabile genus, the phrenologists ; but, in truth, the observations 

 of the learned author of the short essay in question are so just in 

 themselves and of so pithy a nature, that we cannot resist the temptation 

 of transferring the marrow* of the subject to our pages, with such 

 observations upon them as occur to us during the perusal. 



After some anatomical observations tending to establish the fact that 

 the attention of the cultivators of the medical art was early turned to 

 the various prominences of the cranium or skull, and to the inequality 

 existing in the thickness of its walls in different parts, the learned author 



* Lest some captious critic should hereafter make the remark that we are under 

 a mistake in supposing the Frontal Sinus to contain marrow, we wish it to be 

 understood that the course of anatomical reading which we have followed for the 

 purpose of enabling us to comprehend the merits of this question, has been 

 sufficient to inform us that the osseous cavities of the frontal bone do not contain 

 marrow ; but we beg to assure our readers, and the critic, that Dr. Milligan's paper, 

 though short, contains a great deal. 



