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; EUROPEAN ORIGINS
Franz Joseph GALL (1758-1828) received his medical degree at Vienna in 1785. He had a large and successful practice there, and conducted extensive private researches into the anatomy and the physiology of the brain. He evolved a theory of cerebral localizatior of the several psychological faculties, and maintained that character am.intellect were simply the sum of the combined functions of the organ~ of the brain.
Dr Johann Gaspar SPURZHEIM (1776-1832) became associated with Gall after attending his lectures in 1800. It was Spurzheim who coined the term "phrenology" in 1814, when he undertook a lecture tour of Great Britain. Although Gall had recognized the philosophical implications of his theories, in general he had adhered closely to the discipline of experimental psychology; but Spurzheim wandered into metaphysics as well as speculation on education, penology, religion, and other concerns. In this new view science and religion merged; phrenology revealed the laws of nature which God had established, which it was man's duty as well as God's will to follow .
When Spurzheim lectured in Edinburgh, one of his auditors was a brilliant young lawyer named George COMBE (1788-1858). Combe , who had been deeply troubled by the Calvinist training of his youth, eagerly seized upon this optimistic new science and commenced an intensive study of it; the result was total conversion and his decision to devote his life to writing and lecturing on phrenology . (Horace ~iann would later describe George Combe's The Constitution of Man as "the greatest book that has been written for centuries.")
George and his physician brother, Dr Andrew COMBE (1797-1847), who was one of the first to advocate humane treatment of the insane and the abolition of restraints, formed the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, which had a large membership and an active life. In 1823 they began publishing the quarterly Phrenological Journal, which was to have a distinguished career for the next 24 years. By the 183O's phrenology had given rise to some sixty-six books and pamphlets, which ran through many editions, and the young science was being nourished by twelve phr(ological societies, which furnished readers, authors, and audiences for the many lecturers on the subject.
abridged from - -
John D Davies, Phrenolog,y 1 fad and science; a 19~ century American crusade. Yale University Press, 1955. BF81 D262p 1971) AMERICAN DEVELOPMENTS
In the summer of 1832 Dr SPURZHEIM arrived in America for a lecture tour. In September he began a course of 18 lectures in Boston, and promptly captivated his listeners, both the fashionable and the learned. In less than 2 months he kindled the phrenological flame into a bonfire; when he died suddenly of a 'continued fever', his brain was preserved at the Harvard Medical School, and on the day of his funeral the Boston Phrenological Society was founded (The American Journal of the Medical Sciences mourned: 'The prophet is gone, but his mantle is upon us.') Spurzheim's lectures, his personality, and his dramatic decease acted as a catalyst to produce an intense flare-up of American interest in phrenology. George COMBE made triumphal American lecture tours during the period 1838-40. tie visited cities only on invitation, with a $750 guarantee, and spoke to large and enthusiastic audiences everywhere. The brilliant Scotsman moved with ease and poise in the best society, and his many intimate friends included Henry Ward Beecher, William Ellery Channing, Samuel Gridley Howe, George Bancroft, Nicholas Biddle, Horace Mann, and Benjamin Silliman•••By mid-century, 50 phrenological societies were in existence. The great panjandrum of American phrenology was Orson Squire FOWLER (1809-1887), along with his younger brother, Lorenzo Niles FOWLER, his sister Charlotte FOWLER, and Charlotte's husband S. R. WELLS. For seventy-five years the Fowlers preached the gospel of phrenology throughout the United States, and they had a host of imitators and competitors. The new science seemed to have a special relevance for the new country. How much it promised! It seemed in truth the philosophy of a free country, this doctrine that man's character could be read from the shape of his skull and improved by the exercise of various mental functions. To a nation avid for the practical, it brought a practical system of mental philosophy. To a nation captivated by neat and simple classifications, phrenology explained how to be happy, how to choose a profession, how to select a spouse, how to raise children. Other sociological and psychological applications were the diagnosis and cure of insanity, the conduct of penology, and the reform of the criminal. It was of interest to doctors, scientists, social thinkers, and reformers of every description; and for those persuaded by its optimistic and utilitarian interpretation of life it offered hope for all and a vision of ultimate perfection. • • • • • The firm of Fowlers and Wells published the American Journal of Phrenology, Life Illustrated, the Water Cure Journal, and hundreds of phrenological tracts. It also published the second edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (Whitman was a devotee, and uses phrenological terminology in many of his poems.) The Fowlers eagerly embraced all the new and radical reform movements of their day -- vegetarianism, anti-lacing and anti-corsetry, bloomers, hydropathy, women's rights, anti-tobacco and temperance movements, phonography (Pitman shorthand), and animal magnetism.
abridged from
Madeleine B Stern; Heads and headlines; the phrenological Fowlers. University of Oklahoma Press, 1971. WZlOO F787S 1971 "Phrenology depended on three essential principles. In the first place, it split up the mind into faculties; as eventually formulated, there were thirty-seven of these. They were divided into two main groups, affective and intellectual. The affective group was subdivided into two classes, the Propensities (e.g., Amativeness) and the Sentiments (e.g., Self-esteem), while the intellectual group was subdivided into a Perceptive class (e.g., Language) and a Reflective class (e.g., Comparison).
"In the second place, phrenology claimed that each of its thirty-seven faculties was located in a definite area of the cortex.
"Thirdly, the phrenologists believed that the degree of development of the various parts of the brain corresponding to the faculties could be ascertained by feeling the inequalities in the external contour of the skull; this presupposed that the outer surface corresponded accurately to the surface (and, therefore, the degree of development) of the portion of the brain immediately below.
"By a piece of tragic irony phrenology was the most popular of all the doctrines of psychology in the whole history of the science, and at the same time the most erroneous. It affords a striking example of the danger of erecting a vast superstructure on inadequate observation and inexact methods, and the fact that Gall himself was no mere charlatan, but a scientist of admitted ability, only adds to the impressiveness of the lesson -- a lesson on which psychologists of the present day may do well to ponder.
"The lesson of phrenology has been inadequately learned, and psychologists have not always realized the necessity of rigorous methods of control in every case where they are applicable. These latter instances show perhaps that psychology has not as yet become entirely tamed by science over the whole of its wide and varied field; a good deal of the speculative licence of the earlier days is to be found here and there. (As is the case with other disciplines, for instance, medicine, which is notoriously subject to fashions and crazes founded on enthusiasm rather than on evidence, and which, like psychology, has not always resorted to such scientific methods of control as are available~"
from pp. 36-37 in
J.C. Flugel, A hundred years of psychology (3d ed.) London, Duckworth, 1964 BF81 F646h 1964 AT l\4-US:IO T1JE8DAY EV.£,,-F'R~B• . • . -- .. .r ..:::,c,,r,w CHILDREN,. TREIB H~ALTH, GROWTH, TRlUHMG ASCHOOLING, AS TAUGHT BY PHRESOLOGY A...'iD PHYSIOLOGY, . Bv Professor 0. S. FOWLER. FOaMERLY OF NEW YORl, BUT NOW OF ~I ♦ TRUIOIT STRHT, BOSTON, MASS., To conclude with a public Description of noted persons nominated • . 1·1~c Ca1~DBL'<-ho•llh1, ulented, and good-are their ~rent.' m""t prcciot1S cartbl1 tre,sured. Yet how mn.n1---<>ver one-blf-dio prematurely I How man1 mo,,,, lovclf :.nd ro,1 at four, bccome ailing or ugly befol'9 \wehe, and wor,e before twcn\1 !· .How tuany "turo out h,11y," bcc•u>e spoiled by well-meant, hut miogllided =n>;:.:aon.t. whoJll " "good briagiag-up" would hvo read.ered the pride or p:.reots aod o. hleJili~g t" 1ociety: An l ho.r inoomp~r>hl1 bottenll would beco.. i( "lraioccl up" io th, 0'9! POJ. 1ible m>nnc1: l'arcol!, do 100 f..! Cull-r eompeten\ to execate you, oven! fal wit? Tb.en, Je:,rn ia thi., focturo, who.t ,..,,,, PMSCIPLU ahould guide their development from birtb. tu m.,,rriag,. There i• D a1,mr," ao,nurrr. eifacational ,1atem, whiob. Ph,cnol"!!)' ~.xpr,1Ju1ls:, ~,en in
Handbill for a Fowler lecture in the 187o's SHOULD WE MARRY1 Are We Well
~ -- --~~ --- ... · .~.,,..,-, ...... , .. ~ ;,-.. , ;,,-- "'\:--:: ~~.:--.-.;_ Mated? # ?{-~-~:---;.·\ ~½~'~ tt!;/; ~~ -\t -5~~ 't..-..-. '~ The mosl important question ~n connection with marriage should be i-n regard to mutual adaptation, physically, mentally anci morally. Phren ology explains this, and therefore .should be consulted. Th<·re are ::nany works on the: _subject that ca11 be read pr~fitably by all, but the best woi:k i:elating to this specially is W~DLOCK; OR, THE RIGHT RELATION OF THE SEXES. A Scientific Treatise Disclosing the· Laws of Conjugal Selection and Pt"e• natal Influences, also Showing Who Ought and Who Ought Not to Marry. By Samuel R: \Yells, author of-"New Physiognomy," "Hm". to Read Character," etc. Price, $1.50; in fancy gilt, $:i. ro show something of the character of this work, we copy the follow• ing fo,m the table of CONTENTS : Qualific;;ilions for Malrimony; The Richt Ace to Housekeeping: Good Habit~ Essential: Howto WiQ Marry: .Motives for Marrying; Marrial[es of Lo,•e; Honeymoon; Mutual Help; Conjug-al Har• Con!i-.1. n~uinity-of Cousins-when Justifiable; A!• mony; Hotel and Club Li(c; lnhabitivencss; Ter- 6niti~s.: Coun~hip- Long or Short; Duly o( Parents; rible Effects o! Morbi Should they marry? FROM NELSON s1zti.,- H e-ads and Faces (New York, 1888) ,j I '. I } •· i ~ The Poems of LE.AVES OF GR.A·ss, PUI!LISHED BY Tim AUTHOR, lfa.y be ordered at nuy Book-Store or Newspaper Depot, . or especially of FOWLER & WELLS, 308 Broadway, New York. Their place of bnalness is lhe principal .Agency for lhe Work, whole.9ale and retail. A note wrhten IO them, givinit lhe writer'• addreH, and enclosing- $1 oo, will procure a bound cory, poat-p~id, by return mail. They surply Booksellers at a libt,ral discount. 'LEAYES OF GP~\SS' may also be purchased or ordered by mail, or the country-lnlde •upplied, from the fol!owing .tlJ!rnM: BOSTON, , • • Fowler, Wells&: Oo-, 142 Washington SI. PHILADELPHIA, Fowler, Well,:&: Co-, 231 Arch alreet, BALTIMORE, , , 1. W. Bond &:·oo, TORONTO, (Oa.,) Maclear & Oo, BUFFALO, • , T, S. Hawl e- Any communication by mnil, for the author of Leaves of Grus, can be directed to him, namely, W.1.LT Wmnru, care of J'OWLER & WELLS, 308 Broadway, New York, Walt Whitman, care of Fowler and Wells, a notice at the end of Leaves of Grass ( 1856) NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY IJ '¼ - ~ •c=-- -. ,-;z,:-- -- ~ . -z:::=»,_,. ..-, .=--ttMf: if!:•Crt - · _. . ' .- The faculty of Destntctiveness. Original caption rends: "DEFi:-;1- TION- Resolution; energy; cntelty; desire to kill. LocATtoN -De Tbe faculty of Philoprogeniriveness. Origi11al caption reads: "DEFI structiveness is situated on each side of the head, oi,er the ears." ~rr:10:-:-Loi.•~. of cbil~re11, a11imals, pets, a11d borses. LocATJON From Lydia F. Fowler, Familiar Lessons J biloproge111tn,•e11ess 1s the :.-ecoud social organ, a11d is situated di 011 Phre11ology (New York, 1848) rectly above A111atir.;e11ess, in the back part of the head, a11d is 1111111- ber two in the Symbolical H end." From r.ydia F. Fowler, Fm11ilinr f .c.,·.,·011.r ou /'bn·nology (New York, 1K+X ) PHRENOLOGY "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or to acquire skill without study or mastery without apprenticeship." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson "In the coming century phrenology will assuredly attain general acceptance. It will prove itself to be the true science of mind. Its practical uses in education, in self-discipline, in the reformatory treatment of criminals, and in the remedial treatment of the insane, will give it one of the highest places in the hierarchy of the sciences." -- Alfred Russell Wallace (1899 (!)) F.d.ward Payson FOWLER (1834-1914) was the younger half-brother of Orson and Lorenzo Fowler. He received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from New York Medical College in 1855. During his medical school days, E P Fowler was a devotee of spiritualism, and an accomplished medium. His utterances in trance impressed not merely the members of his family but one or two of the strongest minds of the day. His spirit communications in Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Malay, and Chinese -- were published in a two volume compendium on Spiritualism. After he received his MD, his spiritualistic activities ended. He became a founder of the New York Medico-Chirurgical Society, editor of the Homeopathic Times, and translator of pioneeer works in neurology. His translation of CHARCOT (1878) is exhibited here. Lydia Folger FOWLER (1822-1874), the wife of Lorenzo Niles Fowler, was the second woman, after Elizabeth Blackwell, to graduate from an American medical school, and she was the first woman in the United States to serve as a professor in a medical school (Central Medical College, Rochester, 1850-51). She practised medicine in New York from 1852 to 1863, and in 1862 was instructor of clinical midwifery in the New York Hygeio-Therapeutic College, which taught the principles of hydropathy (water-cure). After 1863, with her husband she lectured throughout Europe and Great Britain on phrenology, physical culture, temperance, moral duty, and social reform.