180 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



results produced by the various combinations of the 

 organs as influenced by temperament, education, and 

 social position, were liable by their mistakes to bring 

 great discredit on the subject, since the public, and espe- 

 cially those who opposed phrenology from any of the 

 causes already stated, could not, or would not, distin- 

 guish between the student and the pretender, and loudly 

 proclaimed that these failures demonstrated the fallacy 

 of the whole science. Considering all these sources of 

 opposition and disrepute, and the difficulty of moving 

 the established sciences and professions, or the official 

 world, to recognize any new thing, it is not to be won- 

 dered at that, when the enthusiasm of the early investi- 

 gators and discoverers had passed away, no new students 

 were found of sufficient independence, ability, and posi- 

 tion to take their place. 



2. Just about the time when Phrenology was gaining 

 a wide acceptance, painless operations during the mes- 

 meric trance were exciting the fiercest opposition of the 

 medical profession; and Dr. John Elliotson, President 

 of the Medical and Chirurgical Society, Lecturer at St. 

 Thomas' Hospital, and a Professor at the University of 

 London an ardent phrenologist and founder of the 

 Phrenological Association was the chief defender of 

 these painless operations, for supporting and practising 

 which his professorship was taken from him. As re- 

 gards this question of hypnotism, Dr. Elliotson is now 

 known to have been right, and his opponents and tra- 

 ducers wholly wrong and grossly prejudiced, as will be 

 shown in our next chapter; yet this prejudice undoubt- 

 edly reacted upon phrenology, and together with the 

 theological and metaphysical prejudice, and that caused 



