Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Daniel Noble

Physician, b. 14 Jan., 1810; d. at Manchester, 12 Jan, 1885. He was the son of Mary Dewhurst and Edward Noble of Preston, a descendant of an old Yorkshire Catholic family. Apprenticed to a Preston surgeon named Thomas Moore, Noble was in time admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and a licentiate of Apothecaries Hall. In 1834 he began to practise in Manchester, and soon showed the special interest in mental disease which afterwards distinguished his career. In the following year he published his first work, "An Essay of the Means, physical and moral, of estimating Human Character", the tendency of which is indicated by the fact that he is described as President of the Manchester Phrenological Society. His practise increased, and in 1840 he married Frances Mary Louisa Ward, of Dublin, they had eight children, one of them Frances, the novelist. Cardinal Wiseman stood sponsor to his eldest child. From the University of St. Andrews he received the degrees of M.D. and M.A., and in 1867 he was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians. His other works are: "Facts and Observationss relative to the influence of manufactures upon health and life" (London, 1843); "The Brain and its Physiology, a critical disquisition of the methods of determining relations subsisting between the structure and functions of the encephalon" (London, 1846); "Elements of Psychological Medicine: an Introduction to the practical study of Insanity" (London, 1853-55); "Three Lectures on the Correlation of Psychology and Physiology" (London, 1854); "The Human Mind in its relations with the Brain and Nervous System" (London, 1858); "On certain popular fallacies concerning the production of epidemic diseases" (Manchester, 1859); "On the fluctuations in the death-rate" (Manchester, 1863); "Evanescent Protestantism and Nascent Atheism, the modern religious problem" (London, 1877); "On causes reducing the effects of sanitary reform" (Manchester, 1878) and several contributions to various medical journals, the best-known of which was a paper called "Mesmerism True-Mesmerism False", which was translated into German and Dutch.

GILLOW, ''Bibl. Dict. Eng. Cath.'', V, 181.

EDWIN BURTON