334 WEIGHT OF THE BRAIN. 



to suppose that the whole nervous system, if sufficiently expanded, 

 would be found too tender to give any resistance to the touch, 



discoveries before writing, he quotes, in his Notes to the Foreign Quarterly 

 (p. 59. ), the following words, with which they opened their report : " The 

 anatomical doctrine of Gall, through the delivery of lectures by him in the chief 

 cities of Europe, and the numerous extracts published by his pupils, have be- 

 come nearly as well known as though they had appeared in an authentic impres- 

 sion." In these Notes he says that he settled his anatomical account with Gall 

 in 1820, and that Gall never answered this and other claims. Gall certainly 

 never would have condescended so far. Indeed, Gall was perfectly ignorant of 

 the greater part that Dr. Spurzheim wrote. After reading some of Dr. Spurz- 

 heim's first English work, published on his arrival in England, Gall gave the 

 book with disgust, but half cut, to Dr. Fossati, and knew nothing more of Dr. 

 Spurzheim's sayings and writings afterwards than what was pointed out to him ; 

 and it was with the greatest difficulty that he could be prevailed upon to take any 

 notice, even for a moment, of what was pointed out to him. My friends Dr. 

 Fossati and Dr. Dancey, who were constantly with Gall, assure me of this, and 

 are astonished at Dr. Spurzheim. Indeed, Gall, in the preface to his third 4to. 

 volume, which contains all the anatomy, had, in 1818, given an answer to all 

 Dr. S.'s anatomical claims. He shews that Dr. S. had no more to do with the 

 volume than to furnish the references, (p. xvii.) At the end of his 8vo. work, 

 Gall also disposes of these claims by summing up the anatomical discoveries as 

 his own. In the American edition of his Phrenology (vol. i. p. 12.) Dr. S. grows 

 so ambitious that he no longer shares with Gall, but at once boldly asserts, " all 

 anatomical discoveries made after 1 804 are the result of my labours ; and in 

 his Anatomy (p. xiv.), he madly says, as to Gall's 4to. volume, " My discoveries 

 form its principal object" ! ! ! 



When Gall was entreated to do himself justice with Dr. Spurzheim, he always 

 mildly answered, that enough had been published of his discoveries before Dr. 

 Spurzheim's time for posterity to see Dr. Spurzheim's folly ; and that all the 

 world knew the great quarto work to be his, though he had been silly enough to 

 join Dr. Spurzheim's name with his own. I fear that Dr. Spurzheim relied on 

 Gall's dignified pride for escaping his deserts. 



Yet among those who never saw Gall, and who have derived their knowledge 

 second-hand from Dr. Spurzheim's works, and read slightly, or not at all, the 

 works of Gall, and especially those who, in addition to these disadvantages, 

 mixed much with Dr. Spurzheim, his pretensions are allowed. In France he was 

 nothing ; his lectures little attended, while Gall's were crowded ; and he ne- 

 glected, while Gall had high practice and the highest consideration. But Gall's 

 works have not been translated, while Dr. Spurzheim published again and again 

 in English, and spent much of his time in Great Britain, and died in America. 

 The result here and in America cannot be better shown than first, in the following 

 ridiculous passage from " an anatomical report on the skull of Dr. Spurzheim, 

 read before the Boston Phrenological Society, by Dr. N. B. Shurtleff, and 

 printed in the Boston Annals of Phrenology : " Having been appointed a com- 



