It caught on like wildfire, igniting interest in Scottish lawyer George Combe, who in 1820 would establish the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, the first and foremost phrenology group in Great Britain. He renamed the practice "phrenology," defined it as "the science of the mind," and set out on a lecture tour to preach the wondrous new concept throughout Britain. Spurzheim became intrigued with the psychosocial potential of this new science, believing it could empower people to improve themselves. The two worked together for a dozen years before having a falling out. In 1800, Gall teamed up with Johann Christoph Spurzheim to further research this theory. He called this "science of the head" craniology and, later, after believing the brain to be not one organ but a group of organs, changed the name of his study to organology. Gall further believed that the shape of the skull reflected personality traits and mental abilities that corresponded to the topography of the brain. Phrenology never achieved the status of an accredited science, although the principle that many functions are localized in the brain is now widely accepted.īildagentur-online/Universal Images Group via Getty Imagesīy the 1790s, Gall began to study the localization of mental functions in the brain, believing that certain areas were responsible for psychological activity. This, he surmised, suggested that one's emotional characteristics were not dictated by the heart, as was assumed at the time, but from somewhere in the head.įranz Joseph Gall, German physician and founder of phrenology. Gall noticed that classmates with larger eyes and more expansive foreheads seemed more adept at memorizing long passages.
The idea that one's skull could give hints to someone's intelligence and personality first popped into the mind of German physician Franz Joseph Gall in the late 1700s, when he was a medical student. But is there any redeeming value to phrenology? Today, it is considered a pseudoscience barely mentioned in "Intro to Psychology" classes. By the early 1900s, the so-called science behind phrenology was debunked. Even Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were curious enough to have the heads of their children read.īut as popular and entertaining as phrenology was, its heyday was short-lived. The middle and working classes were consumed with the idea of that this kind of scientific knowledge was power. The English edition of L’Uomo Deliquente (1876) on display here was put together by Lombroso’s daughter Gina.Phrenology intrigued people from all walks of life. His theory of the born or hereditary criminal provided the scientific basis of many attempts to solve the problem of crime in society by eliminating the reproductive opportunities for criminals through institutionalization, prisons and penal institutions, or surgical sterilization. Lombroso was influenced by Charles Darwin and Francis Galton in his work in criminology. Lombroso, while not aware of Gregor Johann Mendel’s work on heredity, was inspired by Franz Joseph Gall’s phrenological theories. Criminal Man According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso.Ĭesare Lombroso was the founder of the Italian school of positivist criminology, which argued that a criminal mind was inherited and could be identified by physical features and defects.
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