the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Sir William Hamilton : 'On the size of the brain and the proportion of its parts, as affected by age, sex, or sexual mutilation.'

Monday. 16 February 1829: 'Went to the Royal Society. There Sir William Hamilton read an Essay, the result of some anatomical investigations, which containd a maskd battery against the phrenologists. It seems these worthies are agreed that the cerebellum is that part of the headpiece which influences the sexual organs and according to this hypothesis that same cerebellum should be stronger in men than in women, in adults than in children, in old men than in youths, in persons mutilated than in those who are in the natural state [...] But if Sir William's course of experiments are correct the very opposite is the truth.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Hamilton      

Sir William Hamilton : Review of Victor Cousin's 'Cours de Philosophie' (Paris, 1828) in Edinburgh Review, XCIV (OCt 1829), 194-221

'Did you read Sir W Hamilton on Cousin's Metaphysics in the last Edinburgh Review? And what inferences are we to draw from it? Pity that Sir W. had not the gift of delivery! He has real knowledge on those matters; but all unsorted, and tumbled topsy-turvy like a "bankrupt stock."'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle      Print: Serial / periodical

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