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Updated: June 16, 2025
I did not even ask for that. I met with Combe's work on digestion and read it, but it did not help me much, either in digesting my food, or my heavy loss. But I made no complaints. I did not even tell my wife till long after, when I was prosperous and comfortable again. And none of those who heard my lectures, saw in me any sign of discouragement.
I must refer you on this subject again to Andrew Combe's "Physiology," especially chapters iv. and vii.; and also to chapter x. of Madame de Wahl's excellent book. I will only say this shortly, that the three most common causes of ill-filled lungs, in children and in young ladies, are stillness, silence, and stays. First, stillness; a sedentary life, and want of exercise.
When the necessity of absolute cleanliness by means of frequent baths was being preached by a friend who had been reading Combe's Physiology, in which he had learned something of the wonders of the skin with its millions of pores that had to be kept open for health, one of our neighbors remarked: "Oh! that's unnatural.
For children, she has done much, or rather might do, would parents read and perpend such books as Andrew Combe's and those of other writers on physical education. We should not then see the children, even of the rich, done to death piecemeal by improper food, improper clothes, neglect of ventilation and the commonest measures for preserving health.
Admirable sound sense was the characteristic that predominated in that intellectual circle, and was brought to bear upon every subject; and I remember with the greatest pleasure the evenings I passed at Mr. Combe's residence in Northumberland Street, with these three grave men.
I read Combe's "Constitution of Man" when between ten and twelve years of age. Though based on the ideas of phrenology and not, I believe, of high repute as a system of philosophy, it was as good a moral tonic as I can imagine to be placed in the hands of a youth, however fallacious may have been its general doctrines.
However, when I said that I would go on foot, taking all precautions, they agreed grudgingly to let me go. I crept along towards this combe on foot, as though I were going bird's nesting. I beat along by the hedges, keeping out of sight behind them, till I was actually on the combe's north slope, climbing up to the old earthwork on the top.
Combe's account of the numbers who attend his lectures, and of the improvement of their bodily and mental conditions which he has himself witnessed, must, of course, make me feel diffident of my own judgment in the matter. Their own experience can alone test the utility of their system, and whether it does or does not answer their expectations.
Combe's principle of "natural laws" being all equally Divine institutions which must be obeyed, "human obedience is a very complicated and perplexing affair, so complicated and so perplexing as to involve positive contradictions;" that "the very same act is required by one law, and forbidden by another, both laws being equally Divine;" and that "we sometimes cannot obey both the 'organic' and the 'moral' laws."
Among the books which profoundly influenced my mode of life and thought during the period embraced in the foregoing extracts were Fowler's "Phrenology" and Combe's "Constitution of Man." It may appear strange to the reader if a system so completely exploded as that of phrenology should have any value as a mental discipline.
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