Phrenology is a pseudo-science which attempts to map the morphology of the skull onto trait within a person's character. It was 'discovered' by the Austrian anatomist Franz Joseph Gall around 1790. Gall initially called his research "organology" , "cranioscopy" or "craniology" and proposed that the surface of the brain had 26 organs, the size of which determined what type of behavioural characteristics the person would display.
One of Gall's first converts was Johann Caspar Spurheim, who helped popularise Gall's ideas overseas, but the main event which brought phrenology to the masses was the highly critical review of Gall's book 'The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and of the Brain in Particular' in the Edinburgh Review. In this book Gall states:
- That moral and intellectual faculties are innate.
- That their exercise or manifestation depends on organisation.
- That the brain is the organ of all the propensities, sentiments and faculties.
- That the brain is composed of many particular organs as there are propensities, sentiments and faculties which differ essentially from each other.
- That the form of the head or cranium represents the form of the brain, and thus reflects the relative development of the brain organs.
From Britain the science spread to America and France in the 1830s and in the 1840s it was re-introduced to Germany. Important contributors to phrenology in the 19th century included the brothers George Coombe and Andrew Coombe who set up the Edinburgh Phrenological Society in 1920, and Orson Fowler and his brother Lorenzo Fowler, who set up a publishing house purely to deal with phrenological texts, called L.N Fowler & Co.
Usually phrenologists used their fingers and palms to study the shape of the head, but less frequently calipers, measuring tapes and other instruments were used. For a while the notion of automatic phrenology, the most famous attempt at this was Henry C. Lavery's Psychograph, a machine which could do a phrenological reading complete with printout.
The main reason for the downfall of phrenology was the fact that phrenologists sought only confirmations for their preconceived hypotheses and did not apply the same standard to contradictory evidence. Any evidence or anecdote which seemed to confirm the science was readily and vociferously accepted as "proof" of the "truth" of phrenology - which is hardly good scientific practice.
Sources include
http://134.184.33.110/phreno/intro.html
http://skepdic.com/phren.html
http://www.neurosurgery.org/cybermuseum/pre20th/phren/phrenology.html