Gall, Franz Joseph
Gall, Franz Joseph
Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828), German anatomist, founder of cranioscopy (later known as phrenology), and physician, was born in the grand duchy of Baden and died at Montrouge near Paris. He was the sixth child of a merchant. After the usual schooling, he studied medicine first at Strassburg and later at Vienna, where he was graduated in 1785.
He began his medical practice in Vienna and at the same time studied the healing powers of nature, the subject of his first book, Philosophischmedicinische Untersuchungen iiber Natur und Kunst im kranken und gesunden Zustande des Menschen (1791). In it, Gall discussed the relationship between body and soul; the latter was located in the brain and was the seat of ideas. This concept led him to the notion of the cerebral localization of mental faculties, and he devoted the remainder of his life to exploring this idea.
There was at the time great interest in methods of determining character and temperament from external bodily configurations, especially the facial (physiognomy), and Gall gradually evolved a new method called “cranioscopy,” combining the concepts of cerebral localization with the analysis of bodily configurations.
He argued that faculties or talents are inborn and dependent upon cerebral structures; therefore the brain is made up of as many “organs,” or areas, as there are moral and intellectual qualities. These “organs” are on the cerebral surface, and as their size is reflected accurately by the overlying skull, they are palpable. He selected and located the “organs” by his empirical observations: having observed that a good memory is associated with protruding eyes, he therefore postulated that the memory organ is on the cerebral orbital surface and its hypertrophy pushes out the eyes. Character and intellect are represented by 27 organs, or psychic qualities, sharply delineated on the cranial surface.
About 1796 Gall began lecturing on cranioscopy in Vienna. Although the theory won great popu larity, its materialism, manifested by an attempt to relate mind to matter, also incited opposition, so that in 1802 Gall’s teaching was banned for religious reasons. Gall was joined in 1804 by Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, who had recently received his medical degree and who helped with the dissections of the nervous system that Gall undertook. Unlike other physiognomists, Gall attempted to create a scientific basis for his theory.
Seeking a more congenial atmosphere, Gall and Spurzheim left Vienna in 1805, and after an extended tour of Germany and neighboring countries, where their lectures excited widespread controversy, they settled in Paris in 1807. As in Vienna, Gall established an extensive medical practice with many famous patients, and he also resumed his lecturing and writing. In 1808 he published his Discours d’ouverture au cours de physiologie du cerveau (1808) and in the same year prepared with the help of Spurzheim a neuroanatomical memoir which was assessed by a group of distinguished French scientists. On the whole the judges were favorably impressed, and in the following year the report, with replies to the criticisms made by the assessors, was published (Gall & Spurzheim 1809). In 1810 Gall’s most important and comprehensive work on neuroanatomy and cranioscopy began to appear, entitled Anatomie et physiologie du système nerveux en general … (1810–1819). Spurzheim helped with the first and second volumes only, for in 1813 he left France to popularize “phrenology,” as he, but not Gall, came to call cranioscopy. Gall’s last publication was a revised edition of Anatomie et physiologie. … He died of a cerebrovascular accident and was buried in Pere-la-Chaise cemetery in Paris: his skull is preserved in the Musee de I’Homme.
Gall had an insatiable desire to learn and claimed that he was not guided by a desire for power, honors, or riches, although some of each came his way. He was perfectly sincere, if somewhat uncritical, in his ideas of brain function and was by no means a quack as is often thought; the stigma earned by phrenology was largely due to its popularizers, who claimed that phrenological examination could be used in career selection, for all kinds of prophecies, in choosing members of parliament and other professional men, etc. Gall’s own intellectual abilities, his powers of observation, and his honesty, integrity, and independence in matters of principle were outstanding. As a product of the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment, he was a social reformer, and he emphasized the need for medical ethics. He deduced moral rules from his phrenology and called for state educational systems and reform of current methods of handling criminals and lunatics.
Gall’s influence was widespread. His anatomical investigations and cranioscopy turned attention to the brain, and he had an important influence on brain dissection and neuroanatomy in general in the nineteenth century. Moreover, phrenology first popularized the modern concept of cerebral localization of function, although it made no specific contribution to the concept. Gall’s basic idea was right, but for the wrong reasons. Phrenology was also important in the development of scientific psychology, of anthropological investigations of the skull, and of criminology.
Phrenology retained popularity throughout the nineteenth century, and societies furthering its practice still exist today. Apart from its general effects upon the study of anatomy and physiology at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it has played no further role in science. However, its influence on social reform, political groups, religion, philosophy, and literature has been extensive, especially in the United States and Britain.
Edwin Clarke
[See alsoNervous System, article onStructure and Function of the Brain; and the biographies ofBroca; Flourens; Lashley.]
WORKS BY GALL
(1791) 1800 Philosophisch-medicinische Untersuchungen uber Natur und Kunst im kranken und gesunden Zustande des Menschen. 2d ed. Leipzig: Baumgartner.
1808 Discours d’ouverture …ail [cours] sur la physiologie du cerveau. Paris: Didot.
1809 Gall, Franz Joseph; and Spurzheim, J. GasparRecherches sur le systeme nerveux en general, et sur celui du cerveau en particulier. Paris: Schoell.
1810-1819 Gall, Franz Joseph; and Spurzheim, J. GasparAnatomie et phijsiologie du systeme nerveux en general et du cerveau en particulier, avec des observations sur la possibility de reconnoitre plusieurs dispositions intellectuelles et morales de I’homme et des animaux par la configuration de leurs tetes. 4 vols. and Atlas. Paris: Schoell. ? A revised edition was published in 1825 in six volumes as Sur les fonctions du cerveau et sur celles de chacune de ses parties.
(1825) 1835 On the Functions of the Brain and of Each of Its Parts: With Observations on the Possibility of Determining the Instincts, Propensities, and Talents, or the Moral and Intellectual Dispositions of Men and Animals, by the Configuration of the Brain and Head. 6 vols. Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon. ? A partial translation of Anatomie et physiologie du systeme nerveux en general, et du cerveau en particulier…. (Rev. ed.)
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ackerknecht, Erwin H.; and Vallois, Henry V. (1955) 1956 Franz Joseph Gall: Inventor of Phrenology and His Collection. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Medical School, Department of History of Medicine. ? First published in French.
Davies, John D. 1955 Phrenology; Fad and Science: A 19th-century American Crusade. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
Fossati, Jean Antoine L. 1858 Gall (Francois Joseph). Volume 19, columns 271-284 in Nouvelle biographie generate. Edited by Jean Hoefer. Paris: Didot.
Hollander, B. 1909 The Unknown Life and Works of Dr. Francis Joseph Gall, the Discoverer of the Anatomy and Physiology of the Brain. London: Gall Society. ? Written by an ardent latter-day phrenologist and therefore very biased.
Temkin, Owsei 1947 Gall and the Phrenological Movement. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 21:275–321.