THE MYSTERIES OF THE HEAD AND HEART EXPLAINED: INCLUDING AN IMPROVED SYTEM OF PHRENOLOGY; A NEW THEORY OF THE EMOTIONS, AND AN EXPLANATION OF THE MYSTERIES OF MESMERISM, TRANCE, AND MIND-READING, AND THE SPIRIT DELUSION — By James Stanley Grimes — 1st Edition / 1st Printing, 1875 — SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION OF SUSCEPTIBILITY TO SUPERNATURAL DELUSIONS THROUGH PHRENOLOGY —Created a New System of Phrenology, Bringing the Science to the Forefront of Victorian Psychoanalysis Publisher: W.B. Keen, Cooke & Co., Chicago (1875)
Very scarce first edition from 1875 of "The Mysteries of the Head and Heart Explained" by James Stanley Grimes, in well preserved condition. Full title: THE MYSTERIES OF THE HEAD AND HEART EXPLAINED: INCLUDING AN IMPROVED SYTEM OF PHRENOLOGY; A NEW THEORY OF THE EMOTIONS, AND AN EXPLANATION OF THE MYSTERIES OF MESMERISM, TRANCE, AND MIND-READING, AND THE SPIRIT DELUSION. Includes 100 wonderful engravings. 359 pages, with book advertisements (and corresponding plates) at the rear. The boards and binding are solid and tight save for light shelfwear and one bumped corner on the lower front board. Slight tilt to book. The pages are crisp and clean save for a few spots of very light foxing on the borders of some of the pages. Previous owner's signature and date on the first two blank pages. A fascinating and detailed account of how different occult phenomena / delusions can be explained through the science of phrenology, or phreno-physiology. The book then provides a complete guide for the application of phrenology to diagnose the susceptibility of occult delusions and to predict future behaviors and personality characteristics of an individual. Please see below for more information on Grimes, his work, his impact and studies on "
phreno-physiology".
James Stanley Grimes (1807 - 1903)
In 1832, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim toured the United States to promote the practice of phrenology. Among the people attending his lecture in Boston was a young lawyer named James Stanley Grimes (1807-1903). Impressed by Spurzheim’s field of knowledge, he decided to study phrenology himself. In 1839, Stanley Grimes published A New System of Phrenology where he proposed a classification system that established three types of cerebral organs: ipseal, social, and intellectual. In a later book, he postulated that there was a direct connection between phrenology and geology, or between brain structure and geological changes. Likewise, he proposed a theory of evolution based on natural selection, which came out eight years before Charles Darwin’s On the origin of species. During the second half of the 19th century, J. Stanley Grimes published two additional books on phreno-physiology: The Mysteries of Human Nature Explained by a New System of Nervous Physiology (1857) and The Mysteries of the Head and the Heart Explained (1875).
