Phrenology, and how to use it in analyzing character.

  • Morgan, Nicholas.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Phrenology, and how to use it in analyzing character. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    gall's method OF INVESTIGATION. 2 1 the utmost circumspection in forming conclusions. A period of thirty years intervened between the time when he first observed the concomitance of verbal memory and prominent eyes and the date of his first lecture on the physiology of the brain ; during which time, he, at an immense cost, made thousands of physiognomical observations. His method was threefold, namely (i), To compare extraordinary talent with cranial configuration; (2), unusual development with mental characteristics; and (3), deficient development with mental manifestation. Thus both positive and negative evidence were duly estimated. The connection between deep sunken eyes and weak memory for words, afforded negative proof of prominent eyes being the outward signs of the internal power for learning to repeat. He found a high crown, and firmness and decision of character, to be a usual concomitance; also, that a vacillating, inconstant disposition was commonly associated with a low crown. His investigations of the brain, up to the time of Spurz- heim first attending his lectures, were principally limited to its form. He compared the head with the skull, and the skull with the brain, and proved that their form corresponded, the one being moulded to the shape of the other. Dr. Spurz- heim thus specifies the stage to which Dr. Gall at that time had arrived. He spoke of the necessity of the brain to the manifestations of the mind, of the plurality of the mind's organs, and of the possibility of discovering the development of the brain by the configuration of the head. He pointed out several particular organs of different memories; but he had not yet begun to examine the structure of the brain. The history of new discoveries is inseparable from the