| Discipline | Mesmerism, phrenology |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Edited by | John Elliotson, William Collins Engledue |
| Publication details | |
| History | 1843–1856 |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
| Standard abbreviations | |
| ISO 4 | Zoist |
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The Zoist: A Journal of Cerebral Physiology & Mesmerism, and Their Applications to Human Welfare was a British journal, devoted to the promotion of the theories and practices (and the collection and dissemination of reports of the applications) of the pseudoscientific concepts of mesmerism and phrenology, and the enterprise of "connecting and harmonizing practical science with little understood laws governing the mental structure of man".[1] The name derived from the Greek word Zoe (ζωή) meaning "life". The Zoist was published quarterly, without a break, for fifteen years: from March 1843 until January 1856.
Edited by John Elliotson, the founder, and former president of the London Phrenological Society, who had been expelled from the University College Hospital in 1838 for his mesmeric practices, and William Collins Engledue, a former President of the British Phrenological Association, who was ostracized by both his medical colleagues for his dedication to mesmerism and phrenology, and by the majority of phrenologists for his rejection of their "socio-religious", spiritual position,[2] in favour of a scientific, materialist, brain-centred position that, in effect, reduced mental operations to physical forces.[3]
"The Zoist was a materialist journal; it repudiated metaphysics and argued that everything—including human thinking—could be explained through the laws of the physical universe ..."[4]
- ^ Godwin (1994), p. 213.
- ^ Such as that maintained by William Scott, President of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, in his The Harmony of Phrenology with Scripture: Shewn in a Refutation of the Philosophical Errors contained in Mr Combe's "Constitution of Man" (1837); and by Mrs John Pugh (S.D. Pugh) in her Phrenology considered in a religious light; or, Thoughts and readings consequent on the perusal of [G.] "Combe's Constitution of man" (1846), etc.
- ^ Cooter (1984), p. 94.
- ^ Ruth (1999), p. 305.