PHRENOLOGY

Phrenology was a science of brain, mind, and human nature that began in the late eighteenth century and endured in modified forms into the mid-twentieth century. The modern name, phrenology, was adopted in Britain in the late 1810s in place of earlier names such as craniology or the physiognomical system. The name is derived from the Greek roots phren, meaning "mind," and logos, meaning "study/discourse."

Phrenology was the creation of the Viennese physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828). In the early 1790s Gall became convinced that he had discovered localized regionsor "organs" of the brain where innate mental faculties resided. He postulated twenty-seven faculties/organs from "impulse to propagation" to "mechanical skill" and "pride, arrogance, love of authority." The particular faculties of Gall's psychology and organology reflect the cases he witnessed in his patients and in local asylums, prisons, and hospitals. Each of these faculties/organs was given a number. Gall believed that the activity or power of a faculty must bedue to the size of its cerebral organ, just as strengthis proportional to the size of a muscle. Furthermore, Gall asserted that the shape of the skull followed the shape of the underlying brain. Therefore, Gall concluded, through an examination of the exterior of the head or skull of a person or animal it was possible to discover character, abilities, and so forth. Between 1805 and 1807 Gall conducted a highly successful lecture tour throughout Europe. In 1807 he settled permanently in Paris, where he continued to lecture and publish on his doctrine.

In 1813 Gall's longtime dissectionist and assistant, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776–1832), left Gall to begin his own lecture tour in Britain. In Britain, Spurzheim represented himself as the cooriginator of the doctrine in order to increase his own status. Even in the early twenty-first century phrenology in the English-speaking world is often described as the system of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim. Spurzheim introduced many significant changes to Gall's system, including renaming all of the organs/faculties to make them seem more benevolent and precise and arranging them in a hierarchical schema of orders and genera. Thus "impulse to propagation" became "Amativeness" and "murder" became "Destructiveness." Spurzheim also introduced several new organs/faculties. He presented the system as something that others should learn and practice themselves. He succeeded in making many converts in England and Scotland. Some of the most prominent of these were the

Edinburgh lawyer George Combe (1788–1858), his brother the physician Andrew Combe (1797–1847), and the radical London physician John Elliotson (1791–1868).

In the hands of the new British advocates the science evolved almost as far away from Spurzheim's ideas as his had from Gall's. They melded Spurzheim's moralistic doctrine of brain and character with the culture of British scientific societies to create a quasi-institutional science of human nature with local societies such as the Edinburgh Phrenological Society (1820–1870) or the Lancaster Phrenological Society (1843) and later national societies such as the Phrenological Association (1838).

As the practice of phrenology diffused throughout Britain it also diversified. There was a widespread naturalistic branch led by George Combe, who presented his phrenologically inspired philosophy of natural laws in The Constitution of Man (1828), which became one of the most widely read and discussed books of the century. Christian

phrenologists combined their religion with phrenology and created their own societies and periodicals. Many prominent phrenologists in the period from the 1820s to the 1840s were also social reformers and offered phrenology as both a mechanism of social control and critique of existing society. Even more numerous were the "practical" phrenologists who earned money and a measure of authority and respect from curious multitudes who paid a few shillings to hear a lecture or have their heads read to discover their fortune.

British phrenology diffused to the United States, France, Germany, and other countries in the 1840s via itinerant lecturers or natives converted in Britain taking it back to their homelands. Phrenology in Germany never became the widespread phenomena it was in Britain. In France, only Paris saw much phrenological activity. Phrenologists in these countries continued to use the lists of thirty-five or so organs/faculties and the white plaster busts demarcated with the organ locations that had been developed by British phrenologists. By the 1860s phrenology had mostly gone out of fashion in Britain and elsewhere. But in the 1870s the American Fowler family brought phrenology back to Britain and excited renewed interest in their own version of phrenology, derived from the earlier British phrenology. They established the British Phrenological Association in 1886. This final phrenological movement did not contain the same scientific pretensions as the earlier phrenology.

The phrenology movement had many consequences. It can be found in hundreds of works of literature from Charles Dickens to Edgar Allan Poe. Phrenology also accustomed many ordinary people to believe that natural laws had power over their own bodies. More visibly, phrenology made the localization of functions in the brain both notorious and suspect. Phrenology inspired later racial anthropologists to use head measurements, among others, to make racial comparisons and judgments.

See alsoCrime; Gall, Franz Joseph; Lombroso, Cesare; Race and Racism; Science and Technology.

bibliography

Cooter, Roger. The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science: Phrenology and the Organization of Consent in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge, U.K., 1984. The most comprehensive history of phrenology, with a strong social historical bent.

Wyhe, John, van. "The Authority of Human Nature: The Schädellehre of Franz Joseph Gall." British Journal for the History of Science (March 2002): 17–42. The beginnings of phrenology thoroughly outlined.

——. Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism. Aldershot, U.K., 2004. Discussion of phrenology and its impact on Victorian naturalism.

——. "Was Phrenology a Reform Science?: Towards a New Generalization for Phrenology." History of Science 42 (2004): 313–331. A critique of a widespread misunderstanding of phrenology.

Johnvan Wyhe