also at Strasburgh. As a student, Gall was distinguished more for originality and solidity of talent, than for display and brilliancy. As a scholar, he was respectable, but excelled most in branches involving principles of science and philosophy. He was passionately fond of the studies of nature, and frequently resorted into the country and the forests to make observations on butterflies, insects, birds, and other tribes of the animal kingdom. This spirit of enquiry and observation was undoubtedly the key which opened to him the way to his future discoveries. Having arrived at the age of manhood, it was necessary for him to make preparations more directly appertaining to his profession. Though his parents had intended him for the church, yet his natural dispositions were averse to such a course; and having become already interested in studies connected with medical science, he was led to turn his attention to the healing art.

Vienna, at this time, contained the most distinguished medical school which could be found in the interior part of Europe. Hither Gall repaired, while in the twenty-third year of his age. Here he enjoyed very superior advantages for obtaining a thorough knowledge of his profession; and his future career evidently shows that they were neither neglected nor unimproved. After completing his studies at the University, Gall entered upon the practice of medicine in Vienna. In the year 1796, he commenced giving public lectures on his new discoveries respecting the functions of the brain. We will here present a brief account of the manner in which he was led into this course of discovery and investigation.

"From my earliest youth," says Dr. Gall, "I lived in the bosom of my family, composed of several brothers and sisters, and in the midst of a great number of companions and schoolmates. Each of these individuals had some peculiarity, talent, propensity, or faculty, which distinguished him from the others. This diversity determined our indifference, or our mutual affection and aversion, as well as our contempt, our emulation, and our connections. In childhood, we are rarely liable to be led astray by prejudice; we take things as they arc. Among our number, we soon formed a judgment who was virtuous or inclined to vice, modest or arrogant, frank or deceitful, a truth-teller or a liar, peaceable or quarrelsome, benevolent, good or bad, &c. Some were distinguished for the beauty of their penmanship; some by their facility in calculation; others by their aptitude to acquire history, philosophy, or languages. One shone in composition by the elegance of his periods; another had always a dry, harsh style; another reasoned closely, and expressed himself with force. A large number manifested a talent or a taste for subjects not within our assigned course. Some carved, and drew well; some devoted their

leisure to painting, or to the cultivation of a small garden, while their comrades were engaged in noisy sports; others enjoyed roaming the woods, hunting, seeking birds' nests, collecting flowers, insects, or shells. Thus each one distinguished himself by his proper characteristic; and I never knew an instance, when one who had been a cheating and faithless companion one year, became a true and faithful friend the next."*

Gall had observed that those scholars with whom he found the greatest difficulty in competing in verbal memory, were distinguished for large prominent eyes. He made very extensive observations on this point, and was finally led to suspect that there must be some necessary connection between memory for words and the size and projection of the eye. "In following out, by observations, the principle which accident had thus suggested, he for some time encountered difficulties of the greatest magnitude. Hitherto, he had been altogether ignorant of the opinions of physiologists, touching the brain, and of the metaphysicians, respecting the mental faculties, and had simply observed nature. When, however, he began to enlarge his knowledge of books, he found the most extraordinary conflict of opinions prevailing; and this, for the moment, made him hesitate about the correctness of his own observations. He found that the moral sentiments had, by an almost general consent, been consigned to the thoracie and abdominal viscera; and that, while Pythagoras, Plato, Galen, Haller, and some other physiologists, placed the sentient soul, or intellectual faculties, in the brain, Aristotle placed it in the heart, Van Helmont in the stomach, Des Cartes and his followers in the pineal gland, and Drelincourt and others in the cerebellum.

"He observed, also, that a great number of philosophers and physiologists asserted, that all men are born with equal mental faculties; and that the differences observable among them are owing either to education, or to accidental circumstances in which they are placed. But being convinced, by facts, that there is a natural and constitutional diversity of talents and dispositions, he encountered, in books, a still greater obstacle to his success in determining the external signs of the mental powers. He found that, instead of faculties for languages, drawing, distinguishing places, music, and mechanical arts, corresponding to the different talents which he had observed in his schoolfellows, the metaphysicians spoke only of general powers, such as perception, conception, memory, imagination, and judgment; and when he endeavoured to discover external signs in the head, corresponding to these general faculties, or to determine the correctness of

• Introduction to the "Anatomie &c. du Cerveau."

the physiological doctrines regarding the seat of the mind, as taught by the authors already mentioned, he found perplexities without end, and difficulties insurmountable.

"Dr. Gall, therefore, abandoning every theory and preconceived opinion, gave himself up entirely to the observation of nature. Being physician to a lunatic asylum at Vienna, he had opportunities, of which he availed himself, of making observations on the insane. He visited prisons, and resorted to schools; he was introduced to the courts of princes, to colleges, and the seats of justice; and whenever he heard of an individual distinguished in any particular way, either by remarkable endowment or deficiency, he observed and studied the development of his head. In this manner, by an almost imperceptible induction, he conceived himself warranted in believing that particular mental powers are indicated by particular configurations of the head. "The successive steps by which Dr. Gall proceeded in his discoveries, are particularly deserving attention. He did not, as many have imagined, first dissect the brain, and pretend by that means to have discovered the seats of the mental powers; neither did he, as others have conceived, first map out the skull into various compartments, and assign a faculty to each, according as his imagination led him to conceive the place appropriate to the power. On the contrary, he first observed a concomitance between particular talents and dispositions, and particular forms of the head; he next ascertained, by removal of the skull, that the figure and size of the brain are indicated by these external forms; and it was only after these facts were determined, that the brain was minutely dissected, and light thrown on its structure."*

It was thus not until after more than twenty years of observations, and with the best facilities for making researches, that Gall first ventured to present his peculiar views to the public. He had, during most of this time, extensive practice as a physician at Vienna-ranked high as a man of science-associated with the first men of the place and the nation, and was connected with several public institutions. His lectures were continued from 1796 to 1802, and were attended by audiences the most intelligent and respectable. Many distinguished strangers, as well as some of the foreign ambassadors at the court of Vienna, encouraged him in his labours privately, and honoured him with their attendance publicly. Prince Metternich was a pupil of Dr. Gall, and afterwards renewed his acquaintanceship with him in Paris, during his residence there as ambassador to Napoleon. Con

From the Biography of Gall, by the editor of his works on the Functions of the Brain.

siderable interest was now created on the subject. Several scientific gentlemen, who had heard his lectures, published reports of them in different periodicals and works. Some, through ignorance and prejudice, opposed his discoveries. It was represented to the emperor, that Gall's views were injurious to good morals and dangerous to religion. This opposition arose from two sources. First, from the influence of Dr. Stifft, then physician to the emperor, and president of the medical faculty. It is stated on good authority, that Dr. S. was a man of no talent as a physician, but a great politician and intriguer. The second source of opposition arose from the overwhelming influence of an ignorant, bigoted, and corrupted clergy.

Accordingly, an edict was issued, on the ninth of January, 1802, by the Austrian government, prohibiting all private lectures, unless a special permission was obtained from the public authorities. Dr. Gall presented to the officers of government a very able remonstrance in defence of his views, and in favour of public lectures on the same; but it was all in vain, and the efforts of his friends in his behalf were equally unavailing. Gall, finding that all prospect of communicating and defending publicly his new discoveries, in Austria, was cut off, determined to seek a country whose government was more liberal and tolerant. He had now passed the meridian of life-(being in the forty-fifth year of his age)-had spent the best of his days at Vienna, and there hoped in peace to live, labour, and die; but TRUTH was dearer to him than ease, pleasure, wealth, or honour. Few can conceive the immense sacrifice which he must have made in giving up an extensive professional business and public confidence, in breaking away from the society of all his acquaintances and relatives, and leaving what had then become more valuable, in his estimation, than all the rest, the greater portion of his craniological specimens, which he had been more than thirty years in collecting.

On the 6th of March, 1805, Dr. Gall left Vienna, accompanied by Dr. Spurzheim, who had now been with him nearly five years. They first visited Berlin, and afterwards continued their tour-repeating their lectures and anatomical demonstrations in more than thirty towns of Germany, Prussia, Holland, and Switzerland-until they arrived at Paris, in the month of November, 1808. In these travels, says Gall, "I experienced every where the most flattering reception. Sovereigns, ministers, philosophers, legislators, artists, seconded my design on all occasions, augmenting my collection, and furnishing me every where with new observations. The circumstances were too favourable to permit me to resist the invitations which came to me from most of the universities. This journey afforded me the opportunity of studying the organisation of a great number of men of

eminent talents, and of others extremely limited, and I had the advantage of observing the difference between them. I gathered innu merable facts in the schools and in the great establishments of education, in the asylums for orphans and foundlings, in the insane hospitals, in the houses of correction, in prisons, in judicial courts, and even in places of execution; the multiplied researches on suicides, idiots, and madmen, have contributed greatly to correct and confirm my opinions."

It was during this tour, that Gall made his celebrated visit to the prison of Berlin, and to the fortress of Spandeau. Here the practical application of the new doctrine was put to a searching test. The interest excited by the novelty of the scene, was not greater than the astonishment produced by the results of the process. On the 17th of April, 1805, Gall visited the prison of Berlin, in company with the directing commissaries, the superior officers of the establishment, the inquisitors of the criminal deputation, the counsellors, assessors, medical inspectors, &c. &c. In their presence, he examined over two hundred prisoners, picked out and arranged into separate classes, those convicted of murder, robbery, theft, &c.; and stated many things remarkably correct concerning their previous history and character, as well as respecting the particular kind and degree of crime for which they then were imprisoned. His visit at the fortress of Spandeau was no less interesting. Here he examined over four hundred convicts, and was equally successful in detecting their crimes, and delineating their characters. Reports of these visits were published at the time in several periodicals, and created no little sensation in various parts of Europe.

"His asser

From November, 1807, Gall made Paris his permanent residence. In the months of November and December, Gall, assisted by Spurzheim, delivered his first course of lectures in that city. tions," says Chevenix, in the Foreign Quarterly Review, "were supported by a numerous collection of skulls, casts, heads, &c.; and by a multiplicity of anatomical and physiological facts. Great, indeed, was the ardour excited among the Parisians, by the presence of the men who, as they supposed, could tell their fortunes by their heads. Every one wanted to get a peep at them; every one was anxious to give them a dinner or a supper; and the writer of this article actually saw a list on which an eager candidate was delighted to inscribe himself for a breakfast, distant only three months and a half; at which breakfast he sat a wondering guest."

In 1808, Gall and Spurzheim presented a joint memoir on the anatomy of the brain to the French Institute. A committee was appointed to report on the same, with Cuvier at its head. The French nation, at this time, was sore on the subject of quackery, and