12" Ceramic Phrenology Head

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In the gallery above, look through some vintage phrenology charts and diagrams from Louis Allen Vaught's 1902 phrenology handbook Vaught's Practical Character Reader. However alien phrenology looks, and however much it appears to modern eyes as a pseudo-science, we would do well to remember that, like contemporary neuroscience, it was once believed to possess the power to determine who was afflicted with badness and who was suffering from madness. Because of the lack of scientific support, along with religious and prejudicial reasons, phrenology never found a wide audience in Ireland. Phrenology was not limited to the common people, and both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert invited George Combe to read the heads of their children. How to Read Character: A New Illustrated Hand-Book of Phrenology and Physiognomy, for Students and Examiners; with A Descriptive Chart.

Phrenology never achieved the status of an accredited science, although the principle that many functions are localized in the brain is now widely accepted. He believed that thoughts of the mind and passions of the soul were connected with an individual's external frame.

They explained to awestruck audiences that someone's personality could be determined simply by studying the bumps and crevices of their skull.

Gall was more concerned with creating a physical science, so it was through Spurzheim that phrenology was first spread throughout Europe and America. The popularization of phrenology in the middle and working classes was due in part to the idea that scientific knowledge was important and an indication of sophistication and modernity. While phrenologists did not contest the existence of talented women, this minority did not provide justification for citizenship or participation in politics. Wells of Bowdoin College "commenced an annual exposition, and recommendation of its doctrines, to his class".Gall and Spurzheim developed a "map" of 27 faculties (later 35), which included things like hope, wonder, combativeness, destructiveness, and individuality. There was increasing evidence to refute phrenological claims, and by the 1840s it had largely lost its credibility. We therefore ask, which are the nations that have excelled and figured in history, not only as conquerors, but as forwarding, by their improvements in arts and sciences, the progress of human knowledge?

A person's inherent faculties were clear, and no faculty was viewed as evil, though the abuse of a faculty was. Essentially, phrenologists believed that the larger or more prominent a region was, the more likely that person was to have a particular personality trait.

Phrenology also advocated variable prison sentences, the idea being that those who were only defective in education and lacking in morals would soon be released while those who were "mentally deficient" could be watched and the truly abhorrent criminals would never be released. George Combe would become the chief promoter of phrenology throughout the English-speaking world after he viewed a brain dissection by Spurzheim, convincing him of phrenology's merits. He believed that people were born with "moral and intellectual faculties," that these faculties were contained in the "organs" of the brain, and that a study of the skull could ascertain which faculties in the brain were the strongest.