364 Obituary JYotice of Dr. Gaspor Spurzheim. 



constant, extensive, and minute study, it was to be expected that many 

 of those who had been induced to embrace it either by the eloquence 

 of the celebrated teacher, or by a partial success in their own phre- 

 nological divinations, relaxed in their scientific pursuits ; and a num- 

 ber of phrenological societies, formed during the full tide of popu- 

 larity, dwindled away until they wholly disappeared. Still in Edin- 

 burgh, which city Dr. Spurzheim again visited in 1828, the study of 

 Phrenology is pursued with unabated ardor, and diligence. From 

 England Dr. Spurzheim returned to Paris, where he continued to 

 lecture, and where he had collected a large phrenological cabinet. 



" In the summer of the present year, Dr. Spurzheim cam,e to this 

 country, where lectures on Phrenology had been delivered long be- 

 fore his arrival, and a phrenological society formed at Philadelphia. 

 On board the ship he proved himself a friend in need to a number 

 of poor emigrants ; many of whom being taken sick on their passage, 

 experienced his kind and successful medical assistance. Dr. Spurz- 

 heim arrived at New York on the 6th of August, in the heat of 

 summer, while the cholera was raging there, and immediately went 

 on to New Haven, where he stopped a few days. A letter from one 

 of the most eminent men of Yale College, in whose family Dr. Spurz- 

 heim spent much of his time, speaks of the ' amiable, winning sim- 

 plicity of his manners, and his unpretending good sense, and good 

 feeling.' From New Haven he came on to this city, with which he 

 felt already familiar, through a number of Bostonians, with whom he 

 had become acquainted in Europe. He intended to stay in this 

 country about two years, to lecture in the principal towns, then to 

 visit the different tribes of our Indians ; and at last to return to Paris. 

 The easy access which that city presents to so many treasures of 

 science, and its being the place of residence of some of his most inti- 

 mate friends, gave rise, now and then, to feelings of homesickness ; 

 which were soon merged, however, in that universal benevolence 

 which made him consider any portion of the human family with 

 which he happened to be connected, and to whom he could do some 

 good, as his nearest relatives." 



He delivered in Boston, chiefly for medical men, one course of 

 lectures on the anatomy of the brain ; and two popular courses on 

 Phrenology, one in Boston and the other in Cambridge, " which he 

 had nearly completed when death overtook him, in the midst of his 

 labors. In his anatomical demonstration of the brain, he endeavor- 

 ed to unfold the design of nature in the complicated structure of this 



