Phrenology

Phrenology is the formal practice of assigning personality traits to individual people on the basis of the contour of their skulls and facial features. "Attempts to classify people into different personality types is as old as the history of medicine...Phrenology attempted to obtain similar information from feeling the shape and particularly the peaks and valleys of the skull. It was very popular during the Victorian era, and like physiognomy, was believed to be useful in detecting criminal behavior." (reference for quote: Humours, Physiognomy & Phrenology., Health & Stress, 1089148X, 2001, Issue 8,) The founder of phrenology was Franz Joseph Gall (1785–1828), a physician from Vienna and a very capable neuroanatomist (reference for quote: Stone JL. Mark Twain on phrenology. [Biography. Historical Article. Journal Article] Neurosurgery. 53(6):1414-6; discussion 1416-7, 2003 Dec. UI: 14633308). He had a theoretical view that in and of itself was plausible, that if the human brain had areas within it that were responsible for specific mental functions, that the relative power of these functions correlated with the size and development of the regions, and that the outer contour of skull was physical evidence of the size of those regions.

In the early part of the Nineteenth Century, some of the advocates of phrenology were not so much interested in personality but in the biological function of the brain. Some, like Gall, thought that each region of the brain had a seperate and distinct function. Those with this view included the great early neuroscientists, Pierre Paul Broca and David Ferrier, who went on to demonstrate the actual areas of the brain responsible for such functions as speech. Others, like Friedrich Goltz, insisted that the entire cerebrum acted as a whole, and that the notion of investigating localized areas as the basis for specific qualities of the brain function was without merit.

The acceptance of phrenology was helped by the presence of physical characteristics that were common to families and ethnic groups and could be correlated to generally held notions about those groups.

By the late Nineteenth century, physicians (and others) practicing phrenology did a flourishing trade. Many, if not most, cloaked themselves with elaborate trappings of "science", including models of the head and brain, and spoke with an assumption of authority. However, unlike actual scientists, few phrenologists were willing to test their conclusions. The following quote from one of Mark Twain's letters nicely portrays the lack of a noted phrenologist's boldness in making a detailed diagnosis:

"I found Fowler on duty in the midst of the impressive symbols of his trade. On brackets, on tables, on shelves, all about the room, stood marble-white busts, hairless, every inch of the skull occupied by a shallow bump, and every bump labeled with its imposing name, in black letters...Fowler received me with indifference, fingered my head in an uninterested way, and named and estimated my qualities in a bored and monotonous voice. He said I possessed amazing courage, an abnormal spirit of daring, a pluck, a stern will, and a fearlessness that were without limit...but then he foraged over on the other side of my skull and found a hump there which he called “caution.” ... He continued his discoveries, with the result that I came out safe and sound, at the end, with a hundred great and shining qualities; but which lost their value and amounted to nothing because each of the hundred was coupled up with an opposing defect which took the effectiveness all out of it. However, in one place he found a cavity; a cavity where the bump would have been in anybody else’s skull...That cavity, he said, was all alone, all by itself, ...(and) represented the total absence of the sense of humor!"

Several months later, Samuel Clemens returned to Fowler, and this time came as the author, Mark Twain, who was world famous as a great humorist!

"Once more he made a striking discovery—the cavity was gone, and in its place was a Mount Everest—figuratively speaking—31,000 feet high, the loftiest bump of humor he had ever encountered in his life-long experience! I went from his presence prejudiced against phrenology, but it may be, as I have said to the English gentleman, that I ought to have conferred the prejudice upon Fowler and not upon the art which he was exploiting [Feb. 10, 1907; the English gentleman was not really a gentleman: he sold my private letter to a newspaper]."(Paraphrased from : Neider C: The Autobiography of Mark Twain. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1959, pp 63–67)