Tag: Phrenology

Archives and Rare Books

Franz Joseph Gall and the Origins of Phrenology

By and — July 26, 2019

The following is a guest post from Stanley Finger, professor emeritus in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University. Finger earned his doctorate from Indiana University and has been on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis since that time. He is also currently affiliated with the school’s History of Medicine  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Phrenology exemplified and illustrated or Scraps no. 7 by D.C. Johnston, Boston, 1837

By — August 31, 2016

Phrenology has many definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary.  My favorite is:

The theory that the mental powers or characteristics of an individual consist of separate faculties, each of which has its location in an organ found in a definite region of the surface of the brain, the size or development of which is commensurate with the development of the particular faculty; the study of the external conformation of the cranium as an index to the position and degree of development of the various faculties. (Phrenology, Oxford English Dictionary c 2016)