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Mike Conley's Tales of the Weird: Do the bumps on your head have something to say?

By Mike Conley | The McDowell News

Published: January 28, 2009

At one time, some folks believed you could find out about a person's character by studying the bumps or fissures on the head. Although the idea has long been dismissed, the study of phrenology has a strange and interesting history.
A German physician named Franz Joseph Gall first developed phrenology around 1800. The belief in phrenology would became very popular in the 19th century and leave its influence on the psychiatry and neuroscience of that time.
Phrenology is based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind and that certain brain areas have specific functions. Phrenologists believed that the mind has a set of different mental faculties, with each particular faculty represented by a different part of the brain. They believed that the skull conformed in order to accommodate the different sizes of these particular areas of the brain. Therefore, a person's personality traits could be determined simply by measuring the area of the skull that overlies the corresponding area of the brain. Any bumps or fissures on the skull would tell much about that person, according to a Web site.
Gall developed this discipline based on something that happened in his childhood. He wrote that when he was a schoolboy, he noticed that the most outstanding scholars were those people who had "prominent eyes, and even more significantly, certain pecularities in the shapes of their heads…" After he graduated from the university, Gall spent several years visiting schools, prisons and lunatic asylums where he studied, felt and measured hundreds of skulls. He used his calipers and other instruments to determine whether a particular person had an "underdeveloped organ of benevolence" or "an overgrown organ of theft," according to the book "Signs of Things to Come."
On one occasion, Gall was given a box of skulls from a prison doctor. He picked one up that had an abnormally wide temple and proclaimed that it was the skull of a thief just by feeling it. His diagnosis turned out to be correct. But that shouldn't be too surprising since the skulls were those of dead inmates.
In the Victorian era, phrenology became popular and was taken seriously by many influential people in Europe and North America. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George was particularly interested in it. Using his instruments, the phrenologist would assess the character of a person and address each of the 27 "brain organs."
Many people consulted phrenologists to get advice in various matters, such as hiring new employees or finding a suitable mate. In many ways, it was similar to astrology or having a psychic reading. In its heyday, phrenology was even used to predict a child's future life.
By the early 1900s, an inventor had even come up with a machine that could read the bumps on a person's head and tell you what they mean. However, phrenology became less reputable because of the many quacks and charlatans who toured the various fairgrounds and theaters. They would give readings for people that would be considered questionable at best. Some scientists used phrenology to promote racist beliefs, including Nazism, according to a Web site.
In time, phrenology would be regarded as a quack science and be relegated to the dustbin of history. But there are some people who still believe it and think they can tell what kind of person you are by the bumps on your head.

Contact Mike Conley at 652-3313, ext. 3422 or e-mail nconley@mcdowellnews.com.