Sir William Hamilton and Phrenology. An Exposition of Phrenology; shewing the complete inefficacy of the objections lately advanced in the Royal Society, and the real grounds on which the system ought to be assailed.

Notes

A scarce anonymous pamphlet wading into the battle Sir William Stirling Hamilton (1788-1856) fought against the practitioners of phrenology. The author takes up Hamilton's side against the pseudo-science but dismisses his methods. Hamilton had read two papers on the subject to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1825 and 1826 from which the conclusion was that phrenological methods lead to moral barbarism and atheism; this pamphlet insists on challenging the factual basis of the system rather than its moral import. It may well have been influential on Hamilton, who five years later published another paper focussing exclusively on actual observations of the brain and their disproving of phrenological methods. This copy belonged to John Forbes, probably the second son of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo.