Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images A phrenology chart from 1859, mapping out the various "faculties" of the brain.

Parker Jones, O.; Alfaro-Almagro, F.; Jbabdi, S. (2018). "An empirical, 21st century evaluation of phrenology". Cortex. 106: 26–35. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2018.04.011. PMC 6143440. PMID 29864593. As in modern neuroscience, Gall believed the white matter was a collection of connection fibers. References As a result, Gall and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, a student of Gall, moved to Paris, where Spurzheim systematized and extended Gall’s system. Phrenology was mostly discredited as a scientific theory by the 1840s. This was due only in part to a growing amount of evidence against phrenology. [34] Phrenologists had never been able to agree on the most basic mental organ numbers, going from 27 to over 40, [41] [42] and had difficulty locating the mental organs. Phrenologists relied on cranioscopic readings of the skull to find organ locations. [43] Jean Pierre Flourens' experiments on the brains of pigeons indicated that the loss of parts of the brain either caused no loss of function, or the loss of a completely different function than what had been attributed to it by phrenology. Flourens' experiment, while not perfect, seemed to indicate that Gall's supposed organs were imaginary. [37] [44] Scientists had also become disillusioned with phrenology since its exploitation with the middle and working classes by entrepreneurs. The popularization had resulted in the simplification of phrenology and mixing in it of principles of physiognomy, which had from the start been rejected by Gall as an indicator of personality. [45] Phrenology from its inception was tainted by accusations of promoting materialism and atheism, and being destructive of morality. These were all factors that led to the downfall of phrenology. [43] [46] Recent studies, using modern day technology like Magnetic Resonance Imaging have further disproven phrenology claims. [47]

Criminal tattoos

At this same time, polygenists relied on heredity to explain human difference. Samuel George Morton (1799-1851), Josiah Nott (1804-1873), Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), and Paul Broca (1824-1880) all claimed that there were inalterable racial differences. Samuel George Morton’s craniological publications, Crania Americana (1839), Crania Aegyptiaca (1844), and The Catalogue of Skulls of Man and the Inferior Animals (1849) included measures of the “internal capacity” of the skull which contradicted Tiedemann’s findings. 20 Morton claimed that his measurements of the volume of the braincase showed racial differences in average brain size. Morton further suggested that differences in skull size showed a ranking of races based on cranial size, and therefore intelligence: Caucasians (especially Germanic Anglo-Saxons) were most intelligent, followed by Mongolians, Native Americans, Malays, and “Negroes.” 21 With this most phrenologists concurred: however underdeveloped a mental organ was, the criminal still possessed the ability to make a moral decision. The character of U.S. Army Major Doctor Augustus Bendix from AMC's western Hell on Wheels is an avid practitioner of phrenology. [87] a b Branson, Susan (2017). "Phrenology and the Science of Race in Antebellum America". Early American Studies. 15 (1): 164–193. ISSN 1543-4273. JSTOR 90000339. Archived from the original on 2022-07-12 . Retrieved 2022-07-12. If some particular behavior is exaggerated in many people, and the skulls of those people are consistently prominent in the same place, then the corresponding brain region must be larger than usual (Greenblatt, 1995).

Holtzman, Geoffrey S. (December 16, 2015). "When Phrenology Was Used in Court: Lessons in Neuroscience from the 1834 Trial of a 9-year-old". Slate. New York. Archived from the original on May 16, 2021 . Retrieved April 4, 2021. In 1796 the German physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) began lecturing on organology: the isolation of mental faculties [19] and later cranioscopy which involved reading the skull's shape as it pertained to the individual. It was Gall's collaborator Johann Gaspar Spurzheim who would popularize the term "phrenology". [19] [20] These produce ideas of relation or reflect. They minister to the direction and gratification of all the other powers: There's a phrenology head in psychologist Colin G. DeYoung's office at the University of Minnesota. "It was given to me as a joke," he says. "It's amusing that people connect it to what we do." Although there were never any violent urban upheavals of major proportions in Britain, many in the middle and upper classes feared this possibility.

A different judgement

It was Gall, however, who suggested the basis for this science. He wrote of “the possibility of distinguishing some of the dispositions and propensities [of an individual] by the shape of the head and skull.” Reportedly, Combe was such a believer in the accuracy of phrenology assessments that he only married his wife after they had both undergone such an examination to determine whether or not they were well suited for each other. But just because phrenology failed to make an impact on the courts, doesn’t mean it had no impact upon penal policy in general. Alexander Maconochie, who, for a short time, was the progressive governor of the Norfolk Island penal colony, was deeply influenced by the discipline. Phrenology was effectively debunked in the early- to mid-1800s by renowned French physician Marie Jean Pierre Flourens, who rejected that there was a correlation between lumps on the skull and the underlying shape of the brain. He also found that the brain worked as whole unit rather than parts — if one part of the brain was damaged, another part of the brain might take over that function. Still, phrenology lingered into the early 1900s, although it was misapplied to other fields like psychology and even used by eugenicists and Nazis to promote their racist views.