LITERARY NOTICES.

A NEW SYSTEM OF PHRENOLOGY. By J. STANLEY GRIMES, President of the Western Phrenological Society at Buffalo. Buffalo: O. G. STEELE, New-York: WILEY AND PUTNAM.

'LET phrenology alone,' said the celebrated ANDRAL, and it will throw all obstacles behind it, with marvellous force. There is no instance of a truth once fairly launched, having failed to make its way.' Long and arduous has been the conflict, but victory is no longer doubtful. The choicest flowers of vituperation, the most subtle argument and witty sarcasm, have all been unavailing. The often slain now flourishes, to all appearance, in the fulness of youthful vigor, and the calmness of conscious strength. And why has phrenology stood thus unshaken, amid the storm of opposition? Simply because it is founded on a rock - the rock of nature. Its doctrines are generalizations of almost innumerable carefully scrutinized and verified facts, and against these no force of argument, nor keenness of sarcasm, nor virulence of bigotry, can prevail.

The book before us, we are sorry to say, is a specimen of what phrenological writings in general are not. For that patient, careful, truth-loving spirit, which is their noblest characteristic, we have names changed, and classifications disarranged, without any adequate reason; and organs stated as established, of which we never before heard, on evidence most unsatisfactory, apparently to gratify a morbid desire for originality. For example: we are presented with a new theory of temperaments, in which 'small eyes' are cited as a sign of the nervous temperament; an assertion utterly unfounded. Again we are told, that persons of the lymphatic temperament 'never rise to great eminence, even if they possess good mental powers.' Now the fact is, they do not possess good mental powers, and therefore they never rise to great eminence.

But we proceed to the explanation given of the bilious temperament. 'After much observation and reflection,' says our author, 'I am satisfied that the arterial system sometimes predominates, and sometimes the venous; and that what is called the 'sanguineous temperament, is produced by the predominance of the arterial system, while the bilious temperament is produced by the predominance of the venous.' That the venous sometimes, nay always, predominates over the arterial system, is certain; and it is right that it should, inasmuch as in it the motion of the fluids is slower, owing to the propelling forces not acting so energetically on the returning as on the distributing vessels; consequently, what is lost in velocity, must be made up in space: but then no particle of matter, except the chyle, can pass into the venous system, which has not first been in the arterial system; and the blood and depositions of the absorbent systems must be returned through the venous system to the heart, with due uniformity, except in the case of obstruction, when the veins become varicose, or distended, and the blood 'ponded;' but this varicosity constitutes disease, and no constitutional and general temperament can be founded on a diseased condition. But granting Mr. GRIMES' premises: is it possible that a temperament the most hardy, that a temperament imparting the greatest capability of endurance and persistent activity, and which is often accompanied by the most stubborn health, can depend on the preponderance of black blood; 45

VOL. XV.

blood almost as unfit for the purposes of nutrition, as ditch-water, and which, could it be transferred to the arteries, would cause immediate death? Surely 'much observation and reflection' have been of little service in this case.

Professor ELLIOTSON says, that 'an Irish gentleman announced the discovery of seventy-four new faculties to the London Phrenological Society in one night.' Our author merely announces the discovery of three: an organ of chemicality, one of pneumativeness, and one of sanitativeness, for an explanation of which we must refer to the book. But that on which the author seems most to plume himself, is his classification. He talks of the 'beauty of the new classification, which his friends have so much admired.' Into its merits we deem it superfluous to enter, but shall exhibit his reasons for dividing the mental faculties into Ipseal, Social, and Intellectual. This division into three classes,' says he, 'is founded on the following considerations:' he then goes on to state, that the spinal column is in three columns, the medulla oblongata in three columns, the brain has three lobes, each of the ventricles three horns, and that at the base of the brain, there are three commissures: he then naïvely adds, that 'there is no other phrenological principle supported by so many anatomical facts.' !

It would be amusing to follow our author into the labyrinth of absurdity in which he immediately involves himself; but we must close with a few quotations, the merit of which phrenologists will readily appreciate :

'In the internal parts of the brain, the fibres of all the organs are blended and confounded together!" p. 41.

'I consider language as one of the lowest animal perceptives!' p. 62.

Let the three following sentences be compared:

'It is, in my opinion, the office of individuality to perceive light, sound, savors, odors, etc. p. 64.

'Chemicality (a new organ,) may be defined the perception of those chemical qualities which affect the senses of taste and smell.' p. 69.

'The polypus manifests individuality in the most perfect manner!' p. 67.

We sincerely hope that Mr. GRIMES will eschew 'originality' in future, and expend that zeal which he evidently possesses, in the more useful and fitting occupation of extending the well-established truths of phrenological science,

THE PATHFINDER OR THE INLAND SEA. By the Author of 'The Pioneers,' 'Last of the Mohicans,' etc. In two volumes. pp. 473. Philadelphia: LEA AND BLANCHARD. New-York: WILEY AND PUTNAM.

Most gladly do we welcome Mr. COOPER back to the field wherein he won his early laurels. His is 'no middle flight,' in his peculiar region. We have not found leisure quite to complete a perusal of 'The Pathfinder,' before this part of our Magazine passes to the press; but we are fully enabled to pronounce upon the beauty and faithfulness of its descriptions of nature, and its felicity of individual portraiture, in one or two of its prominent characters. In the language of another, whose earlier years were ours, we may say: 'Accustomed as we have been from childhood, to the scenes and splendors, and the deep spirit of sylvan romance, which attaches itself to all the incidents and histories of the Six Nations, we hail a work like this with peculiar pleasure. 'Our inland seas' are sources of as much poetic and imaginative interest, as half the seas of Europe. They have seen races born, the smoke of whose fires of council have arisen in the bright or shadowy lands along their borders, until generation after generation has passed away; and they are destined yet to receive and transport, as a highway for the innumerable population which will multiply from them to the Pacific, the riches of empires. We are glad to remember all the rural features of these vast regions; while step by step

we can trace up the rapid and brilliant advances of white innovation, and the well-ordered culture of civilized life. The Pathfinder reveals to us many pictures whose grand fidelity we recognize at once; and we should be unmindful of what we have ever owed and acknowledged to the author who has painted them, if we did not here express the hope that, abandoning abstract disquisitions, or a censorious portraiture of manners and politics of civilized nations, he would liberate his genius in the spheres where it must shine; upon the trackless ocean, and along our leafy land.' We shall aim to do more elaborate justice to the volumes before us, in a succeeding number.

THE REFORMATION OF MEDICAL SCIENCE DEMANDED BY, INDUCTIVE PHILOSOPHY. A Discourse delivered before the New-York Physicians' Society.' By WILLIAM CHANNING. Second Edition. New-York: WILEY AND PUTNAM.

THE author of this discourse is known as one of the earliest advocates of the medical philosophy of HANNEMANN, on this side of the Atlantic, and as one of its most successful and respected practitioners. Educated in the tenets of the old system of medicine, associated with its ablest professors, exposed to all the prejudices, and imbued with all the predilections, of the schools, it certainly required more than ordinary independence for such a man to release himself from the trammels of his professional and personal position, and more than ordinary courage to avow a faith which was regarded by the regular practitioner as quackery, and received by the community with distrust and incredulity. Against all these adverse influences, Dr. CHANNING has persevered in the advocacy and practice of HOMEOPATHY, until it has in a great measure ceased to be the object of idle ridicule, and equally absurd denunciation; until public opinion has driven ignorance to inquiry, and has compelled many of the profession to substitute patient investigation for the easier privilege of contempt.

We have read the discourse before us with no little interest. It is an able and elaborate performance, indicating habits of well-disciplined reflection, of philosophical inquiry, guided by a sincere love of truth, and a boldness to follow its directions to their inevitable results. The author avers that he admits and believes nothing that he does not KNOW, establishing his doctrines on the unshaken rock of the Baconian philosophy; assuming as the first principle and axiom of his faith, that 'man, the servant and interpreter of nature, understands and reduces to practice just so much as he has actually experienced of nature's laws; more he can neither know nor achieve.'

The general object of this discourse is to establish the position, that medicine cannot be entitled to a rank among the positive sciences, until its professors shall have compassed a successful generalization of the curative powers of the materia medica. Until the discovery and application of some common principle to the relations of disease and remedies, it is obvious that the whole system of medicine can be nothing but a patchwork composition of shifting expedients and lawless experiments. The accidental remedies of one day, are supplanted by the equally accidental discoveries of the next; and medicine blunders on, century after century, in a labyrinth of principles uninvestigated, and mysteries consequently unexplained. Homœopathy claims to lend a cue to the labyrinth; it presents a touch-stone to the mysteries; it claims to be the key-stone of the arch, to complete the hitherto imperfect circle of medicine, and to elevate it, by the introduction of an uniform and eternal principle, to the rank of a positive science. Its pretensions, moreover, are not speculative. They do not rest on any fanciful and unproved theory. They assume nothing that is not confirmed by the most searching analysis, and that is not based on the logical conclusions of inductive philosophy.

The leading principle of Homœopathy, and the foundation of the system, is presented in the compendious axiom, 'Similia similibus curantur;' expressive of the general truth, that 'agents, medicinally administered, are curative of those sufferings of the sick,

which, patho-genetically administered, they generate in the healthful.' This covers the whole pretension of the doctrine. It does not claim to be a new system of medicine. It only claims to have achieved the great desideratum of the healing art, the philosophical generalization of the curative powers of the materia medica, and to form in medicine the science of Therapeutics. It assumes to be the promulgator of a general law, whose truth and universality rest upon induction, and are capable of being demonstrated or disproved by experiment. Surely there is in all this nothing to excite the public distrust, or disturb professional equanimity.

The theory of Homoeopathy assumes that all diseases are disorders of the common vital power, manifesting themselves in particular symptoms; that all medicines which can justly be considered remedies, are adapted to the specific cure of a certain exhibition of these symptoms; and that the general law of specific remedies, or the property which points out a substance for the cure of a disease, is the power of that substance to generate in the healthy subject effects similar to those of the disease it cures. With regard to the application of the last law, and the question of minute or infinitesimal doses, there is no teacher but the test of experiment. It is quite as difficult to understand the operation of a large dose as of a small one; and it is quite impossible to do away with the insuperable logic of fact, by the easy and ready resort of that ridicule which is more frequently the refuge of error, than the test of truth. To give a precise idea of the positive pretensions of Homœopathy, their extent and character, we copy a paragraph of the discourse before us, in which they are stated with great distinctness, and felicity of illustration :

Homœopathy is often styled 'New System of Medicine.' This it does not claim to be; for, a system of medicine must embrace all the important medical sciences. Now, Homeopathy came into existence not to supplant these; not to subvert, indeed, any thing previously established; but to supply an acknowledged, an imperative want; to complete, as it were, the arch of Scientific Medicine. So far from denying her obligations to the experience of past ages, in the very introduction of Hahnemann's Organon, its author has drawn largely upon this experience in support of his doetrine. So far from disowning the great advances which modern researches have effected in many departments of science, she frankly admits, and gladly avails herself of these essential elements of the great arch it was her province to complete; for example, the sciences of Special and General Anatomy, of Phisiology, and General Pathology, on the one side, and the various departments of Natural History and Chemistry, as sources of the Materia Medica, on the other. But, corceding even perfection to these indispensable sciences, it is manifest that without its key-stone, a scientific system of Therapeutics, the arch of the medical sciences was alike devoid of symmetry and strength. For, what could it avail to the Art of Healing, though on the one hand, every fibre and every funetion of the animal frame, in health and disease, were perfectly disclosed; and on the other, creation had yielded up its stores, and Chemistry had analyzed them all, and re-combined their elements without limits, if that science which should teach the adaptation of agents thus multiplied, to the removal of morbid action, was yet to be created? And that it was to be created, the whole history of Medicine testifies. All that was positively established on the subject, all that had effectually withstood the revolutions of medical opinion marking this history, consisted of a few specific medicines and a few specific practices, (for which the art was chiefly indebted to fortuitous or empirical sources,) and these not referred, but deemed irreferable to any consistent system of general principles, and of course offering no claim to the appellation of a science.'

Our limits will not not permit us to pursue a subject, the discussion of which is doubtless better adapted to the pages of a medical than a literary journal. But the Homœopathic doctrine has of late excited no little interest in our community. The recent establishment in this city of a beautiful and well-conducted monthly journal, devoted to its illustration and promulgation, will form an important era in its transatlantic history. Its professors are beginning to be treated with more forbearance and consideration by their brethren of the healing art; they are increasing in numbers, and they enjoy, in a higher degree than hitherto, the respect and favor of the community. These are indications which promise well for the science. Physicians of established standing, practice, reputation, and prejudices according to the old system, begin to find that Homœopathy cannot be sneered down; that it survives even the silent contempt of the profession, and what is still more fatal, the detected charlatanry of at least one of its pretended practitioners. We have been informed that numbers have so far surmounted their repugnance to small doses, as to commence inquiries; and it is not impossible that they may ulti

mately be induced to institute experiments. It is pretty hard, to be sure, to convince the 'gentlemen of the old school' that there is any virtue in infinitesimal particles; but when we know that the mere inhalation of an infected breath may be fatal to human life, we should scarcely be surprised that an equally imperceptible agency should be potent to sustain and preserve it.

We do not intend to enlist among the professed believers in the Homœopathic principle; although its beautiful generalization, in bringing light out of darkness, and order out of confusion, presents an interesting and attractive system of medical philosophy. It is certain, however, that the science is making rapid progress in the confidence of our metropolitan community, and that it is introduced with a show of authority which should incite the Allopathic school of physicians to investigate its merits with patience, even if they are not prepared to decide with impartiality. They have had their joke at the small doses, until the small doses seem to have got the laugh on their side.

We cannot take leave of this philosophical and original discourse, without alluding to the fact, that it has not yet been answered by any member of the body before which it was delivered, nor, as far as we have been able to learn, by any member of the medical profession, although it was first published more than a twelve-month since. The reason we take to be simply this, that the discourse is too closely reasoned, too logically put together, to be met in a manner that shall be altogether satisfactory to the 'NewYork Physicians' Society.' It demonstrates, beyond dispute, that a science has been hitherto wanting, to complete the circle of the medical sciences, and without which the whole system must be imperfect. Whether or not this defect is supplied by Homœopathy, may remain to be seen: but that the defect exists, is abundantly proved in this discourse, by its own conclusive exhibition, and by the cited admissions of many of the most distinguished disciples of the Allopathic school. If the positions of this discourse are so well taken that they are impregnable, this fact may account for the silence of the profession; but if they are untenable, it is the duty of Allopathists to expose their weakness. If they suffer their patients to be misled by the acute and plausible arguments of a writer so skilful as Dr. CHANNING, and will see these heresies running the lengths of a second edition, without rebuke or reply, they must not be surprised if popular faith should get the start of professional distrust, and regard Homeopathy as a science, even before it shall be duly recognized by the 'Society of Physicians.'

AN HISTORICAL DISCOURSE: Delivered at the Celebration of the Second Centennial Anniversary of the First Baptist Church in Providence, R. I., November 7, 1839. By WILLIAM HAGUE, Pastor of the Church. pp. 192. Providence: B. CRANSTON AND COMPANY.

We are glad to notice the increasing interest manifested in various parts of the Union, in collecting materials toward a more perfect history of our country and its institutions. Local histories, and the records of our primitive settlements, are among the most important materials for the future historian. Historical discourses, such as are frequently delivered at our public institutions, are of equal importance; as the authors are enabled, by confining their attention to a particular period, or a particular subject, to elucidate that subject more fully. As many of the old New-England towns were settled between the years 1630 and 1640, the present period has been prolific in the production of these valuable documents, as two centuries have passed away since their establishment. Next to the landing of the 'Pilgrim Fathers,' and the settlement of Plymouth, no event of the times is so fraught with interest, as that of the founding of the colony of 'Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,' by ROGER WILLIAMS. But it is not the history of this colony that forms the subject of Mr. HAGUE's discourse exclusively. It embraces a condensed history of the first Baptist church established in America; also biographical notices of ROGER WILLIAMS, the several presidents of Brown University, and other eminent men of the Baptist denomination, in this and other countries.