Phrenology

Phrenology "Before phrenology all we knew about the brain was, how to slice it" -- Richard Chenevix, 1828 (Victorian Web). Phrenology was a popular pseudoscience that was founded by Franz Gall. He believed that by examining the bumps on a person's skull, you could determine ones personality characteristics, moral characteristics, and intelligence. Notions such as, are people with large foreheads smarter than people with small foreheads, were at the core of phrenology. This is what led …

…Fowler brothers was responsible for the head reading craze the started in the late nineteenth century. Phrenology also became well known for its anthropological/racial concerns. Even though phrenology never gained the status of an accredited science, it has been absorbed into many other practices. Franz Gall may have been wrong about the bumps on our skulls, but he and other phrenologists were right about different functions are localized in different parts of the brain.