Phrenology :: essays research papers

Phrenology is basically the study of somebodyality through the study of the invent of the skull. The basis of this theory is that the wit conforms to the shape of the head and its contours. This pseudoscience says that because we have isolated where different parts of personality come from we can tell how dominant this trait would be in a persons life by the size of the piece of the brain. We have since proven that this theory is not true. Franz Joseph Gall is considered to be the founder of the direct scientific unite between the morphology of the skull and personality traits. Gall was one of the first scientists to consider the brain the home of all mental activities. His main work was called The Anatomy and Physiology of the neuronic System in General, and of the Brain in Particular. In this article he put forth five points that phrenology was based on in general. 1. That moral and able faculties and innate.2. That their exercise or manifestation depends on organization.3. T hat the brain is an organ of all the propensities, sentiments, and faculties.4. The brain is composed of many particular organs as there ar different propensities, sentiments, and faculties which differ from one another. 5. That the form of the head or cranium represents the form of the brain, and thus represents the relative development of the brain organs.Gall linked the faculties with particular brain localizations through careful observation and expensive experimental measures. Johann Spurzheims contribution to phrenology was also great. He helped Gall in a study of brain injuries with the phrenology concept Gall had created. He also studied many cases of aphasia following victims cranial injuries in battle. In 1832, he arrived in America, which was at that time desperate for insight into human personality, and started on a lecture circuit that eventually killed him only six months into it. While Spurzheim was in America he managed to inspire two young, frustrated evangelists whose names were Lorenzo Niles Fowler and Orson S. Fowler. These two are largely responsible for spreading phrenology throughout the country. They traveled from town to town carrying the truth of phrenology. They offered lectures, readings, and to esteem the charteristics of total strangers through the bumps and valleys on their heads. Soon everyone from small-town folk to the rich and famous were getting readings. It became a fad throughout America.