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The Founder of Phrenology

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The Founder of Phrenology THE FOUNDER OF PHRENOLOGY. FRANZ JOSEPH GALL, Phy.~ician ; UniTue Pioneer in the Terra Incognita o/the central Nervous S'qstem ; Discoverer of " Broc,~'s space ; " and (much misunderstoo~t and misrepresented) " Founder o] [the 'science" of] Phreno~o7y." By Jom~ K~oTx, M.~., M.D., Ch.B., and D.P.H. (Univ. Dub.) ; M.R.C.P.I. ; M.R.I.A. ; &c. TgERE are but few names, indeed, to be found among those which have obtained special notice in the history of science--true or false--the motives and achievements of whose bearers huve been so thoroughly misunderstood, or misrepresented, or both, as that of the " founder of phrenology." Hardly- even of Machiavelli can it be said with so much truthful fidelity, that " his works were misrepresented by the learned, misconstrued by the ignorant, censured bv the Church, abused with all the rancour of simu- lated [in his case, scientific] virtue ." Franz Joseph Gall was born at Tiefenbronn (border-line of Baden and Wiirtemburg), March 9, 1758, and died at Montrouge (near Paris), August 22, 1828. In the course of this scripturally-timed pilgrimage of three-score years and ten, sloth or lethargy, physical or mental, found no admission. He studied medicine at Strasburg and at Vienna, and in 1785 started on his medical career in the latter city. Eleven years later, he commenced to give special courses of lectures there on the structure and functions of the brain; the "localisation" of the latter having long been the subject of his most enthusiastic research and observatian. In the course of six years, the fame of his unprecedented views had attracted the attention of the Austrian Government ; the result of which was thathis public discourses on matters cerebral were prohibited, as being subversive of orthodox theologicM dogma. But the irrepressible lecturer would not be permanently silenced; and, accordingly, after another interval of three years (1805), he started on a wide European lecturing tour, which embraced (~-ermany, ltolland, Sweden, and ~witzerland. He was accom- panied--pretty necessarily--by an associate-assistant, Spurz- heim ; and at the end of a couple of years (1807), when his name and fame filled Europe, he serried in Paris to practise as a physi- cian, which he did with the most brilliant success. The memoir of the conjoint researches and discoveries of master and assistant, which was presented to the French Institute in the 378 Franz Joseph Gall, Physician. following year, elicited an unfavourable report from the leading scientific specialists of that accomplished and ezitical oligarchy, of whom Cuvier was one. The sentence was followed by the production of a series of works on the structure and functions of the brain and nervous system, which culminated in the colossal Anatomic et Physiotoqie d,t Syvt~ae NerJ;eu,. The accusations of materialism and ]atal,ism whic:h were diligentlv levelled against his system, called forth (1811) a volume entitled Des Disposi- tions lnnges de l'Ame et de l'h~,rit. In 1813 the hitherto sub- ordinate Spurzheim fel~ himself sufficiently accomplished--and, accordingly, independent--to take " Fre:lch leave " of his master, and left for England, the most. fructifying nursery of charlatans and cheats, with the well-founded hops of reaping' a harvest for himself by an unprincipled--but highly lucrative--misapplica- tion of his master's rese~rch3s and discoveries, and the fame thereto adherent. Gall vigorously protested against, and un- sparingly denounced, the pro:stare a vl ,nef,h.~:t~ of his quoadam associate ; to whom, and to the Caled)aian Combe, humanity is indebted for the shilling phrenological bust and the vagrant phrenological practitioner. The progressive devolutionary development which Gull's laboriously cultivated science of cerebral loealisation underwen~ at the hands of those worthies, and 6f those of the horde of blatant quacks and cheating charlatans who soon greedil7 adopted their methods--with re- vision of decorative illustrations and i nprovemellts--rapidly came to confer upon phreaologv an odorous reputation, which absolutely excluded the p~tronage, or even passing recognition, of all " scientists" who felt seriously anxious for the preserva- tion of the re~pecta')gity of their reputation. One of the pregnant sigls of the ti'nes, however, in this re- volutionary and democratic--if sometimes devolutionary and, perhaps, even retrograde--generation is the fact that it has liberally displayed instances of its scepticism of hearsay authority in matters of long-received opinions, and has pre- sented conspicuous activity in the whitewashing of dusky repu- tations. Machiavelli, Lucrezia Borgia, Mary Queen of Scots, Itenry VIII., Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon Buonaparte, and various others have had many of the strongest items of incrimi- nating evidence advanced against them by contemporaries and immediate post'zrity, neutralised, or even completely re- versed, and, in every instance, modified more or less favourablv. And even the much-abused " founder of phrenology" and his Franz Joseph Gall, Physician. 379 despised science have of recent years been brought into the Court of Scientific Appeal by champions who have displayed their readiness and willingness to defend against all comers the validity of the scientific claims of the original cartologist of cranial topo- graphy and attempted localisation of cerebral function. Most of their arguments have, I believe, been advanced before-- some of them, perhaps, with a greater proportion of literary momentum, and eveu of scientific precision. These latter gifts tend, I fear, to become proportionally more rare among the ranks of the practitioners of the healing art as the broadcast diffusion of physical knowledge and mechauical methods renders the acquisition of a certain amount of so-called "practical" " science" so much more readily attainable by the proprietor of the average modicum of intellect. I would also indicate, in passing, another regrettable feature of the intellectual progress of the present generation: the unact:now[ed~ed neglect of the logical faculty and method in the scientific researches and discussions with which our eyes and ears are every day assailed. Some observant individual has remarked before now that logic is the one form of reasoning which men do not employ in every- day life. This statement is, I believe, uncontradictable. But if the syllogistic test had been periodically applied to the " scientific" methods, and " facts," and " proofs," which have continuously pervaded our mental atmosphere during the past half century, the world would surely have been saved from many considerable inundations of preposterous--and often mis- chievous-theories, whose practical applications have been so successfully floated on the intellectual (and thence on the mercantile) market. And earnest observers and thinkers would have escaped the depressing contemplation of the " scientific" bounce, and the Malvolio-nic self-appreciation, of so many con- temporaries who have managed to secure a reception within the inner circle of recognised teachers and representatives of materialistic knowledge, as well as of the more aggravating conceit of the extra-circumferential zone of aspiring candidates and hangers-on, which forms the chromosphere of the central illuminating mass of the chosen representatives of scientific revelation. A writer of the semi-inspired type has before now enunciated the concisely epigrammatic (as well as satisfactorily metrical) aphorism : "The proper ~tudy of mankind is man." 380 Franz Joseph Gall, Physician. And, of all the departments of the tangled human economy, there is surely none which more worthily attracts man's concentrated scientific and philosophic attention than does the organ of mind and thought--of the powers and faculties which specially distinguish humanity from all other types of animated nature. The study of the brain is indeed a fascinating one; and in the present age, when every member o[ every civitised community is educated, and every educated person---male or female-- rejoices in the possession of a brain, and in the consciousness that the best furniture for its decoration and the most unlimited supply of nutrition suitable for the promotion of its ma.~imum growth and development lie within fairly easy reach, it may safely be affirmed of the total male population that every voter remains unsatisfied till he has furnished his own cerebral organ to his own special taste. And every woman, too--i~l every civilised state--glories in the conscious possession of a brain, and in the ability to display the powers and possibilities of its special function--the intellectual--especially if she happens to belong to the type known as " the New." Accordingly, it is a great--and a worthy--source of self-congratulation to the self- satisfied scientist of oar twentieth century to be able com- placently to feel that his knowledge of brain and mind has, by the researches of recent years, been brought to rest oa a reliably solid foundation of physical facts. The seat of the organ of thought, the ~rvx~ (soul, mind), the possession of which alone distinctively elevates man above the level of the rest of animated nature, has always--and very naturally--possessed a special interest for the philosopher and the scientist. The immortal, and presiding, unit of the triple soul of the " divine" old Greek was located by Plato in the brain. The association led him to make the cranial globe a microcosm, a quintessential " picture in little " of the entire spherical universe. And the enthusiastic modern Platonist, Dr. Henry More, the contemporary and--for a time at least-- devoted admirer of Descartes, enumerates no less than ten special localities (mostly, as might be anticipated, of the azyqos type of arrangement, in which various seekers after truth had indicated the seat of anchorage of the soul. Notwithstanding his own temporary admiration for the personality and philosophy of his great contemporary, More came, after careful examination, to reject with utter scorn Descartes's attempted localisation of the immortal part of man in the conarion.
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