William Collins Engledue


William Collins Engledue, MD, MRCS, MRCS, LSA 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, in favour of a scientific, materialist, brain-centred position that, in effect, reduced mental operations to physical forces.

Education

Born at Portsea in 1813, the son of John Engledue and Joanna Engledue, he was a brilliant student. Sent to the University of Edinburgh by John Porter, to whom he was originally apprenticed, Engledue took his final exams after only two years study. At Edinburgh, he took prizes for proficiency in surgery, pathology and practice of physic, practical anatomy, and physiology; and was also the President of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh.

Medical practice

Having spent a year as the anatomical demonstrator for John Lizars, Professor of Surgery to the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, he returned to Portsmouth in the winter of 1835, and started to practice there.
Greatly concerned with the conditions of the poor — prior to 1849, "he gave daily advice, gratuitously, in his own house the large class of patients who were too poor to pay, and yet above seeking eleemosynary aid" — he spent much of his time trying to improve the purity of the water supply to Portsmouth. He was instrumental in the foundation of the Royal Portsmouth, Portsea, and Gosport Hospital in 1849; and, at the time of his death, he held the appointment of surgeon to the hospital.

Cerebral physiology

A phrenologist, one-time President of the British Phrenological Association, his provocative presidential address, dealing with issues of phreno-mesmerism, the controversy of the day, in which he expressed the strong materialist views on phrenology, which were shared by Elliotson — who, incidentally, was the chairman of that particular session — led to Engledue's separation from that association.
Engledue was a strong advocate of mesmerism and, with John Elliotson, co-founded The Zoist; and remained its joint editor until publication ceased in 1856. While Elliotson had performed the first medical procedure in the U.K. that had been rendered painless by mesmerism, it is almost certain that Engledue performed the first undocumented surgery that had been rendered painless by mesmerism in August 1842.
Also, in his Cerebral Physiology and Materialism — the published text of his Presidential Address to the British Phrenological Association — Engledue introduced the concept of "cerebration" to designate the operation of the brain: a term that was later revived, in 1855, by William Benjamin Carpenter's "unconscious cerebration", which Carpenter offered as a more refined development of his earlier concept, the "ideo-motor principle of action".
In 1858, Engledue delivered a well-received series of twelve lectures on "Human Physiology" on behalf of the three Literary societies of Portsmouth – the Athenæum, the Philosophical Society, and the Watt Institute — to an enthusiastic audience of more than a thousand on consecutive Monday evenings from 11 January 1858 to 28 March 1858:
The series was immediately followed by a single lecture on "Cerebral Physiology" on 14 April 1858.

''The Zoist''

Engledue and John Elliotson were the co-editors of The Zoist: A Journal of Cerebral Physiology & Mesmerism, and Their Applications to Human Welfare, an influential British journal, devoted to the promotion of the theories and practices of mesmerism and phrenology, and the enterprise of "connecting and harmonizing practical science with little understood laws governing the mental structure of man", that was published quarterly, without a break, for fifteen years: from March 1843 until January 1856.
The Zoist, was printed on high quality paper, and issued quarterly to its subscribers. It was also published for a wider readership in annual volumes. Well-written in crisp, scientific English, it was devoted to the propagation of information about the applications of phrenology and to the collection, storage, and dissemination of reports of the therapeutic efficacy of mesmerism — in part, it acted as a disciplinary clearing house for information and the experiences of both amateur and professional practitioners from all over Great Britain, and its colonies — and it placed great stress on the well-demonstrated usefulness of mesmerism, not only in the alleviation of disease and suffering, but in the provision of pain-free surgery, especially amputations.

Suicide

Enledue "was a man of considerable eminence in the medical profession … and enjoyed a very extensive practice" in Portsmouth. In a state of deep melancholy consequent upon a nosocomial infection, namely erysipelas, acquired whilst hospitalized for surgery on an otherwise unremarkable small tumour, he took his own life in December 1858.
During the coronial inquest into Engledue's death, conducted on Friday 31 December 1858, his personal physician of eight years standing, Robert Pennington Sparrow, MRCS, MRCP, an ex-Naval surgeon, stated that Engledue's nosocomial infection was "erysipelas, followed by abscess"; and that its pain and discomfort were so severe that Engledue "had occasion to take large doses of opium to produce sleep" constantly during April, May and June. By July, he had ceased to need opium and, despite the fact that "he had not thoroughly recovered, and had not the physical strength to encounter what he was called upon to go through", Engledue resumed his medical practice at the beginning of July. He continued to practice up to and until 20 December, when he requested colleagues to take over his work-load.
At that time, given his diarrhoea and nausea, Sparrow had "persuaded him to lay up, telling him that he was killing himself with work", and, as Sparrow remarked to the coroner, whilst "persons labouring under the symptoms such as I have described the deceased to have suffered, are sometimes the victims of an uncontrollable suicidal impulse", he had formed the opinion that "the deceased's mental faculties were very much impaired", that "his mind was giving way, and that he was in a very different condition from what he had been in all his life before", and "was fearful of permanent insanity, rather than of any act of ". He also remarked that he had, therefore, come to the conclusion, that Engledue "was not in that condition which would induce me to recommend that his mother and sister keep a strict watch over him".
Sparrow made a point of emphasizing that there was nothing extraordinary about Engledue possessing prussic acid, because "bi-carbonate of potash in combination with prussic acid is frequently prescribed as a medicinal agent … in case of nausea in the disease under which the deceased was labouring … and medical men frequently have recourse to it"; and, whilst stressing that he had not prescribed this mixture in Engledue's case, he also remarked that there would have been nothing remarkable about Engledue self-prescribing its administration. Engledue's local dispensing chemist gave evidence that he had supplied Engledue's written request for "specific quantities of solution of taraxacum, tincture of gentium, bicarbonate of potash, together with three drachmes of prussic acid" three days earlier. The jury delivered the following verdict: "That the deceased died from the effects of prussic acid, taken with intent to destroy life, while in a state of unsound mind."

Footnotes

External media