salivary glands, skin, and kidneys, or that the principles of urine should be discharged from almost every part of the system, or that a vicarious discharge from the roots of the hair should supply the place of the uterine secretion.

On this subject, one point should be always borne in mind, viz. that we may be wrong in saying that a patient is quite sane, while he is still an invalid and in bed. Unless we can show that, after his recovery, and in his various intercourse with the world, he preserves his original intelligence, it would be wrong to assert that there has been absolutely no lesion of intellect consequent on the affection of the brain. While lying at ease in bed, and unaffected by any moral stimuli, he may seem to possess a sound condition of mind; he may put out his tongue, or stretch forth his hand, when requested; he may give an accurate account of his symptoms, and answer all the ordinary medical interrogatories with precision. But you are not, from this, to conclude that he is perfectly sane. Many persons, under these circumstances, have died in bed, and appeared to preserve their intellect to the last; but in such cases, the test of sanity, intercourse with the world, could not be fairly applied, and hence I think that there are not sufficient grounds to pronounce a decided opinion as to the real condition of the intellect in such cases.

Before I quit this part of the subject, I wish to make a few remarks on the doctrines of phrenology. There can be no doubt that the principles of phrenology are founded on truth, and, of course, highly deserving of your attention, as likely, at some future period, when properly cultivated, to exercise a great influence over medical practice. The great error of the phrenologists of the present day, consists in throwing overboard the results of pathological anatomy. If a pathological fact is brought forward, as appearing to bear against the validity of their opinions, they immediately exclaim, "We dont recognise any fact or principle drawn from disease; our science has to do with the healthy, and not the morbid, condition of the brain." Now, this is altogether absurd. Phrenology, if true, is nothing but the physiology of the brain, and pathology is nothing but the physiology of disease. Phrenology must be tested by disease as well as by health, and if it does not stand the test of pathology, it is wrong. If phrenology be a science founded on truth, if it is a true physiology of the brain, or of that portion of it connected with mental phenomena, one of two results should obtain either that it should be confirmed by pathology, or that the difficulties, which pathology presents, should be explicable in a manner consistent with the science. The phrenologists, in my mind, are doing a direct injury to the cause of their science, by their unnecessary and ill-timed hostility to pathology. It is idle to say, as they

do, that theirs is the science of health, and that it is unfair to apply to it the test of disease. From pathology is drawn a host of facts, from which the doctrines they profess derive their principal support. The mere phrenologist, who understands not, and despises, pathology, is nothing better than a charlatan, and professes a science which he does not comprehend. If he would recollect that the brain in a state of health is most, and in a state of disease least, adapted to the purposes of thought, he would see that this is one of the strongest arguments in favour of his doctrine, that the brain is the organ of mind. The more healthy it is, the fitter it is to discharge the functions of intellect, and vice versa; yet phrenologists are so absurd as to think that pathology has nothing to do with their science.

But besides confirming the doctrine that the brain is the organ of thought, there are innumerable facts drawn from pathology, which have a tendency to prove that particular parts of the brain are the organs of peculiar phenomena. We see an injury of one part of the brain, accompanied by a train of symptoms indicating some peculiar lesion of mind; we see an affection of another part, attended by a different class of phenomena. Here pathology, the science which phrenologists reject and despise, goes to establish the ground-work of their doctrines, that the brain consists of a congeries of parts, having each a separate and distinct function. We find, for instance, that disease of one portion of the brain affects the intellect; of another, the generative organs; of a third, the muscular system. What does this prove, but that the brain is not a simple organ, but composed of a congeries of parts, each of which governs a different part of the system, or ministers to a peculiar purpose? Now, what is this but what the phrenologists themselves wish to prove?

Further, the professors of phrenology have placed all their organs on the surface of the brain, and for this they have been loudly 'censured. Phrenology, it is urged, knows, or professes to know, nothing about the central parts of the brain, which must be equally important with the superficial, and have confined their investigations to the surface alone. Now it is a curious fact, that the pathology which they deny, in this instance, furnishes the best reply to this objection. I mentioned at my last lecture, that if we examine the symptom of delirium, we find that it characterises the inflammation of the periphery, and is commonly wanting in that of the deep-seated portions. In other words, mental alienation is the characteristic of the disease of that portion of the brain where the phrenologists have placed the intellectual organs. Here is a strong fact in favour of the doctrines of phrenology, derived from that science which the mere phrenologist throws overboard and despises. Again, according to the

researches of some celebrated French pathologists, there are a number of facts to show that there is a remarkable difference between the symptoms of arachnitis of the convexity and of the base of the brain. This conclusion, which, after a most careful series of investigations, was adopted by them, is borne out by the results of my experience, and appears to me to be established on the basis of truth. They have discovered that arachnitis of the convexity of the brain is a disease characterised by prominent and violent symptoms, early and marked delirium, intense pain, watchfulness, and irritability. We have first delirium, pain, and sleeplessness, and then coma. But in arachnitis of the base of the brain, the symptoms are of a more latent and insidious character; there is some pain, and the coma is profound, but there is often no delirium. What an important fact for the supporters of phrenology is this, and how strikingly does it prove their absurdity in rejecting the lights derived from pathology! Here we find the remarkable fact, that inflammation of the arachnoid, investing the base of the brain to which the phrenologists attach, comparatively, no importance, is commonly unattended with any lesion of the intellectual powers, while the same inflammation on the convexity is almost constantly accompanied by symptoms of distinct mental alienation.

It is objected to the phrenologists that they know little or nothing of the central parts of the brain; that though these parts may be fairly considered to be of as much importance as any others, still they 'do not admit them to be organs of intellect. Now, what does pathology teach on this subject? It shows that we may have most extensive local disease of the central parts of the brain-that we may have inflammation, suppuration, abscess, and apoplexy, without the slightest trace of delirium. Indeed, there can be no doubt that the central portions of the brain have functions very different from those on the surface. They appear more connected with another function of animal life, muscular motion, and sensation. Then let us examine the phenomena of old age. Every one is familiar with the fact, that when a man arrives at an extreme age, he generally experiences a marked decay of intellectual power, and falls into a state of second childhood. Does pathology throw any light upon this circumstance? It does. From a series of ingenious and accurate investigations, conducted by two continental pathologists, Cauzevielh and Desmoulins, it has been found that a kind of atrophy of the brain takes place in very old persons. According to the researches of Desmoulins, it appears that, in persons who have passed the age of seventy, the specific gravity of the brain becomes from a twentieth to a fifteenth less than that of the adult. It has also been proved that this atrophy

of the brain is connected with old age, and not, as it might be thought, with general emaciation of the body; for in cases of chronic emaciation from disease in adults, the brain is the last part which is found to atrophy; and it has been suggested that this may explain the continuance of mental powers, during the ravages of chronic disease; and also the nervous irritability of patients after acute disease, in which emaciation has taken place.

I might bring forward many other facts to show that phrenology is indebted to pathology for some of the strongest arguments in its favour; and I think that those phrenologists who neglect its study, or deny its applicability, are doing a serious injury to the doctrines they seek to establish. The misfortune is, that very few medical men have turned their attention to the subject; and that, with few exceptions, its sup porters and teachers have been persons possessing scarcely any physiological, and no pathological, knowledge. Phrenology will never be established as a science until it gets into hands of scientific medical men, who, to a profound knowledge of physiology, have added all the light derived from pathological research. To give you an instance of the mode of reasoning of the non-medical phrenologists: In their drawing-room exhibitions, they appeal with triumph to the different forms of the skull in the carnivorous and graminivorous animals, with respect to the developement of Destructiveness; and all are horrified at the bump on the tiger's skull. But, as Sir H. Davy well observes, this very protuberance is a part of the general apparatus of the jaw, which requires a more powerful insertion for its muscles in all beasts of prey. Phrenology, as generally taught, may answer well for the class of dilettantis and blue-stockings, or for the purposes of humbug and flattery; but its parent was anatomy, its nurse physiology, and its perfection must be sought for in medicine. The mass of inconse

quential reasoning, of special pleading, and of "false facts," with which its professors have encumbered it, must be swept away, and we shall then, I have no doubt, recognise it as the greatest discovery, in the science of the moral and physical nature of man, that has ever been made. I feel happy, however, in thinking that, of late, the science has been taken up on its true grounds, in Paris, London, and Dublin. Vimont's splendid work on Comparative Phrenology will form an era in the science. In London, Dr. Elliotson has directed the energies of his powerful mind to the subject; and in Dublin we have a Phrenological Society, of which Dr. Marsh is the president, and my colleague, Dr. Evanson, the secretary; and, under such auspices, much is to be expected.

ARTICLE II.

DISSECTION OF THE BRAIN.

An Examination of the Human Brain, by George Combe, Esq., in the Albany Medical College, on Saturday, 11 A. M., February 1st, 1840. Present, Drs. Hamilton, Boardman, Hoyt, Armsby, March, James M'Naughton, Professor Dean, Mr. Wm. Combe, Charles Olmstead, Esq., and David Cogswell, Esq. The two latter gentlemen, together with Dr. Hoyt, are residents of Syracuse.

Mr. Combe, while delivering a course of lectures on phrenology at Albany, N. Y., dissected a brain in accordance with the principles of the science, before the above named gentlemen. Several notices of this dissection have appeared in the Albany, Syracuse, and Utica papers, in some of which there were misstatements and remarks of a personal nature much to be regretted. We have collected the facts in the case, and present the following statement as a candid and correct account of the dissection.

The brain had been prepared by Dr. Hoyt, by having been kept in alcohol for some four or five months; and for the purpose of seeing for himself its true anatomical structure, as first shown by Drs. Gall and Spurzheim in their new mode of dissecting the brain, this gentleman had left home, and travelled one hundred and fifty miles to see Mr. Combe unfold the nervous tissues of the mental organs. Much praise is due to Dr. Hoyt for the pains he had taken in preparing a brain, and going the above distance to witness an examination of its structure, with particular reference to its functions. It should be remembered, that before the time of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, the usual course of examining the brain was to cut it up into slices, like a ham or a cabbage-head, beginning the work of destruction upon the upper surface, and thus proceeding to the base; and this is the way pursued by the anti-phrenologists. To be consistent, they should dissect all parts of the body alike; that is to say, follow the tissues, and not cut them across, but unfold them as we would the parts of an orange-the same rule should be followed with the brain; and such was Drs. Gall and Spurzheim's method, and it is that of every phrenologist of the present day. We would here remark, that whenever a brain is placed in alcohol for dissection, it is highly important that the membranes be removed, in order that the spirit may have free access to all parts of the viscus, by means of which its fibrous structure will be rendered much more distinct in the dissection.

In the examination by Mr. Combe, the first thing exhibited was the decussating fibres at the roots of the pyramidal bodies, beautifully