(1) He finds himself drawn on a journey involving phrenology , the dodgy science of determining mental prowess from bumps on the head, involving a machine called a psychograph.(2) At this point, many no longer considered phrenology a legitimate science, and America was now looking to the most recent European import, the emerging field of psychoanalysis, to explain human behavior.(3) In Bentham's day, the cutting edge of brain science was phrenology - the idea that you could read someone's character by feeling the contours of his or her skull.(4) Once a lively ÔÇÿscienceÔÇÖ, phrenology disappeared because what it proposed was incorrect and hence irrelevant.(5) As the prototype for a normalizing physical anthropology, however, phrenology , with its value-laden stereotyping psycho-techniques, introduced new ethical problems.(6) No one these days would argue such a thesis at length any more than they would pontificate on the brain-measuring taxonomies of 19th-century phrenologists who took the white man's superiority for granted.(7) These reports summarized the ethnic makeup of the United States, and included phrenological studies of different races.(8) The phrenological examiner also had to take into account the development of the ÔÇÿintellectualÔÇÖ faculties relative to those that governed the ÔÇÿanimalÔÇÖ functions.(9) Professor Hubert, the eminent phrenologist and psychologist, delivered to a very large audience in the Central Hall of the Exhibition Buildings, a lecture entitled ÔÇÿHow to read men and women at a glance.ÔÇÖ(10) Other resources were in short supply as well: in 1887 the journal of the National Museum in Rio reported despondently on the difficulties of obtaining Indian skulls for phrenological research.(11) Instead of countering these puny charges, let me just say that these allegations of inferior innards recall those of the phrenologists and racial purists in one of the darkest eras of modern history.(12) Eventually it became fashionable to have a reading done by the famous phrenologists , and many celebrities of the day had their heads examined, including Julia Ward Howe, Clara Barton, Hiriam Powers, Theodore Weldand, and Edwin Forrest.(13) I'm studying women's phrenological characteristics.(14) True, his working environment is near-Victorian, with polished walnut desk, silver candelabra and a porcelain phrenological head.(15) His death mask, which showed him to have had a sharply receding forehead, created problems for nineteenth century phrenologists since it ÔÇÿleft no room for the organ of causalityÔÇÖ.
