William Collins Engledue

William Collins Engledue
Born1813
Died30 December 1858
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.