William Collins Engledue

William Collins Engledue
Born1813
Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
Died30 December 1858
Southsea, Hampshire, England
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of Edinburgh
Known forMesmerism, Phrenology, The Zoist
Scientific career
Fieldsmedicine

William Collins Engledue (1813 – 30 December 1858), MD (Edinburgh, 1835),[1] MRCS (Edinburgh, 1835), MRCS (London, 1835), LSA (1835) was an English physician, surgeon, apothecary, mesmerist, phrenologist – and, in concert with John Elliotson, M.D., the co-editor of The Zoist.

A former President of the British Phrenological Association, Engledue 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]

  1. ^ His dissertation was titled "What Evidence have we that the External Senses can be Transferred to other parts of the Body, as is said to occur in Somnambulism?": see Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol44, No.125 (October 1835), p.549.
  2. ^ 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 "Combe's Constitution of Man" (1846), etc.
  3. ^ Cooter (1984), p.94.