Phrenology

A detailed Summary of Phrenology


"Before phrenology all we knew about the brain was, how to slice it" -- Richard Chenevix, 1828 (Victorian Web). Phrenology was a popular pseudoscience that was founded by Franz Gall. He believed that by examining the bumps on a person's skull, you could determine ones personality characteristics, moral characteristics, and intelligence. Notions such as, are people with large foreheads smarter than people with small foreheads, were at the core of phrenology. This is what led me to pick this topic for this paper. I have always been told I have a large forehead, so I found this topic interesting. By going to hospitals, prisons, and schools Gall gathered evidence to try and support phrenology. By doing this he identified 27 personality characteristics that he believed could be diagnosed by examining areas of the head. He devised maps of the showing the location on the skull of differen


t personality characteristics and abilities. He believed that a large forehead was associated with ones higher intelligence. Gall took his ideas to the general public when his theories started to be ridiculed by other scientists. He began to give "readings" in which he described ones personality based on measuring the bumps on a person's head.

Since the mid- nineteenth century, phrenology has been almost completely discredited. Even when it was most popular between the 1830s and 1840s, phrenology was very controversial. It never became an accredited science. Phrenology did become a formalized social activity, which started in Britain. George & Andrew Combe, David Welsh, James Brownlee, William Waddel, and Lindsey Mackersey founded the first phrenological society in 1820. In 1822 George Combe starts to lecture about phrenology in Edinburgh. Also in 1822, the first phrenological society in

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 621
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

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