Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 001.djvu/42

38 The lower seat which surrounds the area is particularly for the accommodation of this medical suite, but on this occasion it was unoccupied; and with heads and bodies, forming a pretty opaque circle over and around the table, the view of several hundred students was completely intercepted.

Since the brain has had its day as the basis of a system, we see no reason why that organ in the human body, which is popularly supposed to be the seat of passion, shall not in its turn serve to amuse the credulity of mankind. Why may not the human heart be registered in a good sized quarto volume, with plates and references, and be made the basis to a system of CORDIOLOGY? Some inquirer may arise, who is fond enough of travelling, and sufficiently anxious for a transient reputation to run over Europe, and give lectures on its fibres and emotions. He may surely discover such a difference in the twisting of these fibres;—in the curvature of its valves;—the sweeping of its arteries;—or the arrangement of its nerves; as may afford a very amusing explanation of human passion. The heart, indeed, is not just as open to examination in the living subject as the skull; and we doubt whether any lady could be found sufficiently in love with science, and a new system, to expose her heart for the sake of either, to the manipulation of a cordiologist. But comparative anatomy will supply us with data, and there needs but a little inference, a little reasoning from analogy, and a great deal of supposition, to help us out. From the form of the chest we may presume the structure of the heart within it;—we might have some good manifestations of passion by the jugular vein; and a great many mysteries commonly referred to the human heart, may probably be explained by peculiarities of palpitation, caused by a modification in the shape or bumpiness of its apex; or in the arrangement of its tranverse fibres.

Such patch-work systems of conjecture and speculation are fortunately destined, by the immutable and eternal laws of truth, to last but for a season. Craniology has almost "lived its little hour." In this city we are certain, that, with the absence of Dr Spurzheim, and the introduction of some other novelty, as a French-dance or a new beauty, it will be very soon forgotten. There is nothing indeed which can make us regret the fall of this ill-fated system. It seems to have been a mere exhalation of human thought, which has risen, and is passing away before us, in all its native duskiness; with no rainbow tinge to allure our gaze by its beauty—not one celestial hue to lighten the dull materiality of its aspect. Edinburgh, March 3, 1817.

of your readers must be aware that Mr John Watson, Writer to the Signet, bequeathed a sum of money to trustees, to be applied, "at the sight of the Magistrates of the city of Edinburgh, to such pious and charitable uses within the said city," as the trustees should think proper; and that the trustees, after announcing it to be their final and unalterable resolution to apply this bequest to the establishment of a Foundling Hospital, declared, That upon their decease, the management of the charity should devolve upon the keepers and commissioners of the Writers to the Signet. Mr Watson died in 1762, and his widow in 1770. The Writers to the Signet became possessed of the trust-funds, according to the destination of the testator's trustees; and after much litigation with the Magistrates of Edinburgh, their right to the management was confirmed by our Supreme Court. These funds, originally small, have been so well employed that they are said now to amount to more than £60,000.

Now, my object is to know whether this sum is to be applied to the establishment of a foundling hospital? and if it be, when it is intended so to employ it? or whether it be in contemplation to apply to Parliament to authorise its appropriation to such charitable purposes as may be thought, in the present circumstances of society and of public opinion, to be more worthy of encouragement?

From the litigation to which this part of Mr Watson's testamentary deed has given rise, and the very different opinions entertained as to the