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 482 PHYSIOK PHYSIOGNOMY work of Varenius, entitled Cfeographia Oene- ralis, in qua Affectiones Generates Telluris explicantur, which Humboldt says, "in the true sense of the words, is a physical descrip- tion of the earth." A part of this is styled G-eographia Comparative^, which is the term now generally applied to works on physical geography; and the leading subjects discussed are those of the most recent treatises. The great advance made of late years in the aux- iliary sciences furnished materials for more extended generalizations and a more complete delineation of comparative geography, which was treated in all its relations with the history of man by Karl Ritter in Die Erdkunde im Verfidltnisse zur Natur und zur Geschichte des MenscJien (2d ed., 19 vols., Berlin, 1822- '59). The principles of the science are ably illustrated in the "Physical Atlas" of Alex- ander Keith Johnston, first published in 1848; and they are expounded, among others, in the writings of Sir John Herschel, Mrs. Somer- ville, Arnold Guyot, M. F. and A. Maury, Eeclus, and numerous other physicists. In this Cyclopaedia the topics more or less closely connected with physical geography are treated under their separate heads, as CLOUDS, DEW, EARTHQUAKE, HAIL, HUERIOANE, MOUNTAIN, TIDES, and VOLCANO, as well as under the more general heads of CLIMATE, EARTH, GEOL- OGY, METEOROLOGY, &c. PHYSICK, Philip Syng, an American physician and surgeon, born in Philadelphia, July 7, 1768, died there, Dec. 15, 1837. He graduated at the university of Pennsylvania in 1785, studied medicine, and in 1788 went to London, where he became the private pupil of John Hunter. In 1790 he was admitted as house surgeon to St. George's hospital, and on leaving it received his diploma from the royal college of surgeons in London. He returned to Philadelphia in 1792, and in 1793, on the outbreak of the epi- demic, was appointed physician to the yellow- fever hospital at Bush hill. In 1805 he was appointed professor of surgery in the universi- ty of Pennsylvania, in 1819 was transferred to the chair of anatomy, and in 1824 was elected president of the Philadelphia medical society. He wrote for medical journals accounts of cases he had treated, or of processes or instru- ments he had invented. He has been called the father of American surgery. PHYSICS. See NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. PHYSIOGNOMY (Gr. Qvaioyvupovia, from i)aiq, nature, and yi-yv&GK.siv, to know), the art or science of reading human nature by means of the face, which is hence called the physiogno- my. It is certain that physiognomy was cul- tivated in ancient Egypt and India, and the present recognition of it by the Chinese as evi- dence in courts of justice is said by them to have descended from remote antiquity. The oldest extant scientific writings on the subject are those of Aristotle. In his "Treatise on Physiognomy " he refers to the labors of pre- decessors in the same field; and his "Histo- ry of Animals " is almost as much a system of comparative physiognomy as of comparative anatomy. One of Aristotle's greatest disci- ples and followers, in physiognomy as well as in natural history and botany, was Theophras- tus; his "Characters" contains 30 chapters with 50 physiognomical sketches. Polemo, shortly after him, also paid great attention to the science; his work on it is contained in the Scriptores Physiognomic, with those of Adamantius, Giovanni Ingegneri, and others. Albertus Magnus, in the 13th century, wrote learnedly on physiognomy, and published a chart of the Aristotelian division of the men- tal faculties in connection with the lobes of the brain, as did also Pietro Montagnana in 1491. Gall makes the latter the basis of his classification and location of faculties and or- gans in his treatise Sur les fonctions du cer- veau (Paris, 1822-'5). The celebrated work of Giambattista della Porta on physiognomy (Na- ples, 1586) compares men with animals, placing them side by side, and is to a great extent a commentary on Aristotle. Cardan, Spontanus, Tommaso Campanella, and many others, con- tributed to this science by their writings and their zeal. Dr. Parsons, in the "Philosophi- cal Transactions" for 1749, gives a list of 41 old authors who have written on expression. Le Brun, father of the French school of paint- ing, was scarcely less distinguished as a phys- iognomist than as a painter. His treatises Sur la physiognomic and Sur le caractere, says a biographer, "were" the chief authority in academies and with teachers," and he " was long regarded as the great model and authority in expression." He compares men and animals with each other, after the manner of Porta; and Tischbein, a German painter, carries out the same idea in his Tetes des differ ents ani- maux dessinees d'apres nature (Naples, 1796). Lavater began his study of faces when a boy, his collection of portraits of remarkable men of all ages and countries in 1769, and his pub- lications on the subject in 1772, these being followed in 1775-'8 by his Physiognomische Fragmente. Camper, the Dutch anatomist, who published "Discourse on the Face," "Analo- gy between the Structure of the Human Body and that of Quadrupeds," and "Connection between the Science of Anatomy and the Arts of Drawing, Painting, and Statuary," shortly after the publications of Lavater, was almost lost in the popularity of his predecessor; and his only really valuable contribution to phys- iognomy that has lived is his "facial angle," the incipiency of which he ascribes to the sages and artists of ancient Greece. A new phys- iognomical era begins with Dr. Gall. Lavater began his studies with observations on the fore- head; Gall began his with speculations on the eyes of his fellow students, followed by studies of the interocular space and the frontal sinus, discovering in them words and the revelations of words, and the senses of form and place. Gall starts with the idea of elementary facul-