Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/86

 cranium, or that, after allowing for various modifications of the latter as arising from various causes, it still essentially agrees with the surface of the brain, projecting where the brain projects, and receding where the brain recedes; but neither proposition can be maintained for a moment. A single glance of the eye, or a touch of the linger, evinces that, in many places where the brain recedes, the outer table projects; in others, as in the orbit, behind the mastoid process, behind the condyloid process, and behind the foramen magnum, where the outer table recedes, the brain on the contrary projects. Finally, except the general disposition towards an oval figure, they have scarcely any thing in common.

Lastly:─As the inner table every where adheres closely to the brain, whilst at some points the outer table recedes two inches from it, and in others, approaches within a quarter of a line, it is evidently not modified by the only interjacent body, the internal table, so as to bear in its expanded parts any certain or fixed relation to the brain within. Taking these two facts together, they afford an unanswerable demonstration of the fallacy of the averment, that augmented developments of the external table, correspond to internal developments of the surface of the brain, or of the organs marked thereon, at their pleasure, by writers on phrenology.

But this is merely rebutting the point maintained by a sect with whom it is impossible to be serious, without becoming, at the same time, ridiculous. What follows, although naturally arising out of the foregoing considerations, claims a brighter scope, and illustrates some hitherto unexplained phenomena