An early and influential materialist explanation of ghost sightings. First edition of a key work attributing ghost sightings to the human mind, an early examination of the unconscious. Rare in commerce, with no copies in recent auction records.

'Two of the most influential studies upon the nature and origin of hallucinations in the early nineteenth century centred their examination upon the supposed sighting of apparitions and phantoms of the dead. In these works, John Ferriar and Samuel Hibbert — both medical physicians — outlined the theory of spectral illusions — the argument that apparitions were to be traced to disorders and diseases of the bodily apparatus, rather than to insanity, revelation, or post-mortem haunting... Hibbert enlarged upon Ferriar's writings and outlined the similar thesis that "apparitions are nothing more than ideas, or the recollected images of the mind, which have been rendered as vivid as actual impressions". Agreeing with Ferrier that ghosts could be understood as waking dreams, Hibbert used analogies with the chemical world to illustrate the changeable nature of the individual's mental state such as the intoxications of dangerous miasmas and the "visonary world" induced by exposure to nitrous oxide. A recurring reference-point in Hibbert's text was that the "renovation of past feelings" through association to a certain level of intensity could produce apparitions in the mind... Though stressing the optical sense in their theories of spectral illusions, Ferriar and Hibbert supported those who argued that such visual phenomena had a peripheral origin in the brain. They stressed that people experienced spectral illusions were neither insane nor ghost-seers, but merely peripherally affected by abnormal impressions and could be treated by such down-to-earth methods as bleeding and the application of active purgatives' (McCorristine, Spectres of the Self, pp45-46).

"Hibbert concluded that whatever their exciting cause, apparitions... resulted from the recall of forgoten memories... No feelings or ideas he maintained were ever lost even if forgotten and could be revived into consciousness by an appropriate stimulus... It is surprising to find so early in nineteenth century psychiatry this basic assumption of an unconscious and its elation to conscious mind" (Hunter & Macalpine).

A previous owner of this copy, William Schroeder, was a Brooklyn physician whose scrapbooks are now at the Center for Brooklyn History.

First edition; 12mo (17.5 x 10 cm); folding chart and tables within the text, offsetting and a little scattered spotting to the contents, ownership signature and ink stamp to front free endpaper, tiny catalogue note tipped-in on the rear free endpaper; contemporary calf rebacked to style, gilt titles, raised bands, blind stamps to compartments, top edge dyed red, binding rubbed and scuffed, very good condition; 459pp.