On Your Own Head

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n           At the beginning of Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times, thenhard-headed Mr Gradgrind demands that the schoolmaster, Mr. M’Choakumchild,ngive his charges,  “Facts. Teach thesenboys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothingnelse, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoningnanimals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This isnthe principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle onnwhich I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”

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nThe Victorians were passionate about scientific enquiry, thensearch for knowledge and the quest for facts. Explorers and collectorsntravelled across the Empire, mapping, logging and recording information. Theynbrought back plants and animals, specimens, accounts of other lands. Innaddition to the world around them, they looked to understand the nature of mannhimself, by any means available. One such route was phrenology – from the Greeknphren – ‘mind’ and logos – ‘knowledge’ – which sought to explain the nature ofnhuman characteristics by studying the shape of the head. Phrenology wasndeveloped in Germany during the 1790s by Dr Franz Josef Gall, who pioneered thenidea that mental functions were localised in the brain, and that mental andnmoral character could be determined from the appearance of the skull. He callednthis cranioscopy, although his assistant, Johann Spurzheim, later renamed it asnphrenology.  Gall and Spurzheimnquarrelled and went their separate ways, lecturing and spreading the study ofnphrenology across the intellectual salons of Europe. It became incrediblynpopular in France and Britain, and Spurzheim took the practice to America. Hendied there during his first tour, but not before the fashion was establishednthere too. The brothers Orson and Lorenzo Fowler set up a phrenologicalnbusiness in New York, publishing books and pamphlets, and Lorenzo went on tonestablish L N Fowler and Co. in London. Fowler’s china head, printed to shownthe position of the various mental faculties, became the popular symbol ofnphrenology. Most modern reproductions bear his name.

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nThe phrenologist would run his fingers over a subject’snhead, and note the various lumps and bumps. These were thought to indicatenwhich characteristics and propensities were prominent or absent, by showingnwhich of the ‘organs’ of the brain were developed or underdeveloped. Gall hadnidentified 27 of these ‘organs’ but others added more over time. Having yournbumps felt was quite the thing.

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nAs advancements were made in scientific knowledge,nparticularly in neuroscience, phrenology began to fall out of fashion, andneventually it was dismissed as a pseudoscience. It enjoyed a slight revival innthe early 20^th Century, but has never regained its former esteem. Onenreason may be that it was misused by some to ‘prove’ the superiority ofnEuropeans over their colonial subjects. A very good account of this practice,nby the Europeans and the Americans, can be read in Stephen Jay Gould’s book The Mismeasure of Man.

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