Franz Joseph Gall and Victorian Phrenology
Measuring Personality in the 19th Century
In the 18th century, the Age of Reason, knowledge of the brain was scanty and gleaned from dissections performed on corpses. It was widely agreed by this time that the brain and not the heart, as had been thought earlier, was the seat of the mind. By the end of that century, an Austrian physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) pioneered the radical idea that different areas of the brain might be responsible for different mental functions. His work published in 1796, “The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and of the Brain in Particular” established the doctrine of phrenology, the first theory of cerebral localisation.
“Organs” of the Brain
Gall proposed that the structure of the brain was made up of many “organs” each the seat of a particular mental faculty. As these mental faculties developed in an individual, to a greater or lesser degree, so the organ responsible for that faculty would develop and grow. Crucially, this growth could be spotted in changes of form in the skull. Gall carried out numerous experiments, taking measurements of the skulls of many people and making note of their characteristics. He developed detailed topological maps believing his work had practical implications permitting the analysis of a person’s character through external examination of the cranium.
Phrenology in the 19th Century and Beyond
Johann Spurzheim (1776-1832) collaborated with Gall and helped disseminate phrenology throughout Europe and the USA. Phrenology quickly gained many supporters. As Gall’s doctrine appeared to offer empirical evidence for a relation between the physical properties of a person’s brain, its shape, size, weight etc and that person’s mental characteristics, such as maternal love, avarice, or a criminal disposition, interest grew. However, the scientific community soon attacked the doctrine equating it to other types of quackery. One reason for the hostility was the commercial abuses perpetrated by some self appointed phrenologists. By the end of the 19th century it had largely lost public as well as scientific appeal. Although some interest still remained: for example the British Phrenological Society was active from 1886-1967.
Opposition to Phrenology
Although Gall’s Phrenology doctrine became discredited, it is too simplistic to dismiss it as yet another mildly eccentric Victorian fallacy. Gall was no fraudster but a serious physician interested in the link between brain and mind. His suggestion that the brain was composed of various “organs” went against the established scientific theory that the brain functioned as a whole. The leading and highly influential proponent of this view was the French physician and anatomist Jean Pierre Flourens (1794–1867).
Vivisection
Flourens and his supporters, having experimented on animals (mainly pigeons) were convinced that it wasn’t so much damage to a particular region of the brain that resulted in disability or death, rather it was the extent of the overall damage that produced these results. Gall’s work opened up the possibility that this view might need revising. The search was on to find an area of the brain that could reasonably be linked to a particular mental function.
Dissection
Although some scientists experimented on animals and extrapolated their findings to include the human brain, most knowledge about the function of the brain came from the careful observation of clinical symptoms or behaviours linked to a study of any lesion discovered at autopsy. This was fraught with difficulties for a number of reasons not least that autopsies had to be carried out swiftly and permission was not always granted.
Broca and the Localisation of Language
The method proved invaluable though almost 70 years after Gall’s work was published. In the early 1860s, another Frenchman, Paul Broca (1824-1880) published a series of papers about a patient who had been unable to speak for a number of years before his death. Broca studied the man’s brain at autopsy. His published findings caused widespread debate throughout the medical world. Broca announced that he had found the site of articulate language in the human brain.
Influence of Phrenology
The discussion regarding the localisation of language in the human brain exercised many scientific and medical minds throughout the remainder of the 19th century and beyond. Today there is an enormous body of work devoted to the complex questions surrounding brain and mind. Gall was undoubtedly a pioneer in the field.
His work influenced other fields though. Precise measurements of cranial features began to be used to classify people according to race or criminal temperament. Unfortunately, much of this work served simply to support 19th century racist stereotypes. Taken to extremes, in the early decades of the 20th century the analysis of cranial and facial features was used to “justify” Nazi racial judgements.
Sources:
Caplan, D (1998) Neurolinguistics and linguistic aphasiology. Cambridge University Press
Clarke, E & Jacyna, L. S (1987) Nineteenth Century Origins of Neuroscientific Concepts.
University of California Press
Harrington, A (1989) Medicine, Mind and the Double Brain. Princeton University Press
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