60 Physiology of the Brain. (January, 
body, to them an enigma, for the solution of which neither 
their ‘tastes nor capacities were adapted, declared to be 
unravelled by a method of study for which they had no 
proclivity, and by an individual who had altogether surpassed 
them in their own province of anatomy, their pride rebelled, 
and their wounded amour propre found vent in denunciations 
as outrageous and absurd as ever greeted the author of a 
new discovery. English metaphysicians, and immaterialist 
divines also, led by English anatomical authorities to regard 
the propounder of these new doctrines as an ignorant quack, 
were not slow in joining the chorus of detra¢tion and abuse 
against the audacious innovator, who overthrew all their 
cherished theories as to the independence of the mind on 
organisation—the former viewing the doctrines of Gall 
with profound contempt and disgust as tending to degrade 
man to the level of brutes, the latter with repugnance and 
alarm as threatening to sap the foundations of religion. 
. Dr. John Gordon, a lecturer on anatomy of great reputation 
in Edinburgh, in an article in the ‘‘ Edinburgh Review,” in 
1815, said, ‘‘ We look upon the whole doétrines taught by 
these two modern peripatetics (Drs. Gall and Spurzheim), 
anatomical, physiological, and physiognomical, as a piece of 
thorough quackery from beginning toend.” Lord Jeffrey, inthe 
same periodical, in 1826, designated the doctrines as “‘crude,” 
“« shallow,” ‘‘puerile,” ‘‘fantastic,’” ‘ dull,” “dogmatiens 
‘incredibly absurd,” “foolish,” ‘‘ extravagant,” and ‘‘ trash.” 
The ‘‘ Quarterly Review,” in their notice of Madame de 
Stael’s ‘‘L’Allemagne,” censured her for being “ by far 
too indulgent to such ignorant and interested quacks as the 
craniologist Dr. Gall,’ and in No. XXV. the same Review 
declared the new science to be ‘‘ sheer nonsense,” and 
designated Dr. Spurzheim as ‘“‘a fool.” The Rev. Thomas 
Rennell, Christian advocate at Cambridge, in his “‘ Remarks 
on Scepticism, especially as it is connected with the subjects 
Organisation and Life,’’ assures his readers that the system 
of Gall and Spurzheim ‘‘is annihilated by the commonest 
reference to fact,” spoke of “‘ its absurdities,” of this ‘‘ master- 
piece of empiricism,” and designated it as ‘“‘the flimsy 
theories of these German illuminati.’”’ Whilst as late as 1836, 
Sir CharlesBell wrote—‘‘ The most extravagant departure 
from all the legitimate modes of reasoning, although 
still under the colour of anatomical investigation, is the 
system of Dr. Gall. Without comprehending the grand 
divisions of the nervous system, without a notion of the 
distinct properties of the individual nerves, or having made 
any distinction of the columns of the spinal marrow, 
