Marketplace of the Marvelous (11 page)

With Spurzheim's death, phrenological authority passed to Scotsman George Combe. A lawyer by training, Combe was far more interested in human psychology than legal wrangling. He had first met Spurzheim in Edinburgh in 1816, and though skeptical of phrenology at first, Combe soon found himself drawn to Spurzheim's optimistic vision of the mind. In 1820, Combe and his brother founded the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, the first of its kind in the world. Most of its members, primarily young middle-class professional men, had been converted to phrenology at the hand of Spurzheim himself.
²⁶

Combe simplified the scholarly theories of Gall and Spurzheim to make them more accessible to regular people. He shared many of Spurzheim's optimistic beliefs but added a few of his own in accordance with the philosophies of natural law and secular society popular in Europe. Like Spurzheim, Combe did not believe that humans were flawed by design; instead, evil resulted from violations of natural laws through either ignorance or willful disobedience. Everyone could attain happiness by living morally and personally believing in God—which put him squarely in the camp of other nineteenth-century reformers of all stripes, from temperance advocates to abolitionists. Combe also delved more deeply into physiology and used phrenology to advocate for the health of the rest of the body and its environment. He claimed that the size of the faculties wasn't the sole means of assessing mental capacity: the health and condition of the whole person had to be considered as well. Anything that reduced what he called “natural vitality”—from coffee and alcohol to tight corsets and urban living—was potentially harmful to overall health.

Combe was particularly interested in using phrenology to improve education, his interest driven in part by his own childhood. Born in 1788 and one of twelve children raised in a small house at the foot of Edinburgh Castle, Combe remembered enduring lessons that consisted solely of memorizing and translating Latin texts. Forced to
sit for hours, Combe found no outlet for his childhood energy, nor did he find the mental stimulation he craved. Any restless movement drew fierce punishment. His teacher, Mr. Fraser, kept order with “The Rod of Correction,” a knotted riding whip that produced brutal welts and sometimes drew blood when cracked over students' arms and legs. From these experiences, Combe came to believe that education should prepare students to become rational future citizens by nurturing their physical, moral, and intellectual capacities. Focusing on dead languages only left the child ignorant “of the constitution of the social system in which he is destined to move.” How could students successfully navigate the world if all they knew were the words and texts of societies long since past? Above all, said Combe, learning should be pleasurable. The interests of students should be encouraged and classroom activities designed to dovetail with each student's natural talents and proclivities as discovered through phrenology. He suggested lessons that taught students to ask questions and to learn through discovery and hands-on investigation rather than the standard course of memorization and passive listening.
²⁷

Combe published his theories, philosophies, and advice for living as
The Constitution of Man
in 1828, a book not completely devoted to phrenology but one that helped to cement phrenology's association with the Protestant ethic of progress, hard work, and self-improvement. In addition to the educational applications of phrenology, Combe proposed that marriage should be based on the pairing of the best-developed brains, and that criminals should be kept in solitary confinement to break their evil thoughts and desires and replace them with new moral influences. Combe's book became a phenomenal success. More than 100,000 copies sold in the United States and Britain, and Ralph Waldo Emerson called it “the best sermon I have read for some time.” It was said that only the Bible and John Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress
were more likely to be found on the shelves of English-speaking homes in the 1830s.
²⁸

By the time Combe arrived in the United States for his own lecture tour in 1838, phrenology had all but ceased to be strictly a medical science. It had instead come to resemble a social movement with its patchwork of scientific, religious, and moral components. Practitioners and followers had spread its message to the far corners of the nation. Phrenological charts began appearing in the pages of popular magazines. The Boston-based
Ladies' Magazine
published diagrams
of the head from three angles along with detailed listings of each faculty, its location on the head, the qualities associated with it, and some general comments on each faculty's prevalence in the general population. Readers learned that “conscientiousness” tended to be larger in children than in adults, which the author saw as a “poor reflection” on the state of American manners.
²⁹

Americans from all classes of society found much to admire in phrenology. The upper classes liked it because it reassured them that the social hierarchy that placed them on top was “natural”; the emerging middle class and working classes liked it because its meritocratic message confirmed their hope of advancement through personal striving and self-improvement.
³⁰
Phrenology seemed to provide answers for all kinds of questions, only a handful of them medical, which led to both its explosive growth and its near divorce from its purely scientific origins. Moreover, phrenology also became commercialized in the United States, in large part due to the efforts of the remarkable Fowler family.

The Fowler brothers, Lorenzo Niles and Orson Squire, turned their interest in phrenology into a substantial business based in New York City in the 1830s. The eldest brother, Orson Squire Fowler, hadn't set out to be a phrenologist. The son of a farmer and church deacon from upstate New York, Orson first pursued the ministry but found his true calling in Spurzheim's theory. He began to lecture on the topic to his classmates at Amherst College in Massachusetts and offered head readings for two cents each.
³¹
His enthusiasm soon infected his younger brother, Lorenzo, along with the rest of the family, including younger sister Charlotte; her husband, Samuel Wells; and Lorenzo's wife, the attractively headed Lydia Folger. After graduation, the brothers put aside their plans for a life in the church for another kind of missionary work: “Phrenologize Our Nation, for thereby it will Reform the World!”
³²

The phrenology preached by the Fowlers had a particularly American spin. Taking Combe's programs of physical and mental hygiene, the Fowlers translated phrenology into a doctrine of perfectionism, a set plan designed to create a perfect social and moral system. This idea of perfection fit the millennial ideas so common among many kinds of reformers in the nineteenth century. The Fowlers also added new faculties to Spurzheim's thirty-three, including conjugality (attachment
to one's partner), vitativeness (love of life), and bibativeness (fondness for liquor), though they had to stop after a few additions because there were limits to how much the fingers could plausibly “read” on the head. The Fowlers' version of phrenology was an attempt to bring together all the strands of science capable of improving the mind or benefiting mankind, which they believed would herald a new and better world.
³³
And like all true-blooded nineteenth-century American entrepreneurs, they also just happened to sell all the phrenological gear and accessories needed to make this happen.

The Fowlers aimed their commercial phrenology at regular people through their lecture tours and popular literature, promoting themselves with the ancient Greek aphorism “Know thyself.” Their missionary fervor was matched by a shrewd business sense and theatrical flair. Appearing in theaters and lecture halls across the eastern United States beginning in 1834, the Fowlers explained the basics of phrenology and offered hands-on analyses of volunteers' heads. The lectures were free (though the examinations were not) and drew large crowds as well as a few celebrities.
³⁴
Few could resist sales pitches that promised to

point out, and show how to obviate, at least one fault, and cultivate one virtue, besides reinvigorating health—the value of which
ASTOR
'
S MILLIONS
can not equal! Shall, then, the trifling examination fee prevent what is thus
INFINITELY
valuable? Will you allow this to intercept your
MENTAL
progress, especially if just starting in life? In no other way can you even obtain for your self, at such a trifle, as much good—as great a luxury.
³⁵

The following year, in 1835, they set up an office in Clinton Hall, at the corner of Nassau and Beekman streets, in New York City.

After her marriage to Lorenzo Fowler in 1844, Lydia Folger began lecturing on phrenology, physiology, anatomy, and hygiene to largely female audiences. Having a female phrenologist on board was a tremendous boon to the Fowlers' business, as many women were uncomfortable attending lectures on health given by men. In 1849, when she was only twenty-seven years old, Lydia enrolled in the newly established Central Medical College of Syracuse and Rochester, New York. The curriculum of Central Medical College, an “eclectic” medical
school, consisted of plant remedies, diet, and hygiene. Lydia received her medical degree a year later, only the second woman in the United States to do so (the first, Elizabeth Blackwell, graduated from New York's Geneva Medical College in 1849). In 1850 she became principal of the “female department” at her alma mater, becoming the first female professor of medicine in the United States. She also established her own medical practice in New York City, specializing in the health of women and children, while continuing to write and lecture on phrenology with her husband.
³⁶

Many women practiced phrenology, though fewer became recognized leaders like Lydia than in other forms of irregular medicine. In part, this was because phrenology lacked organizational structure and cohesion. There was no national phrenological association, and most patients had a one-time encounter with a phrenologist rather than an ongoing relationship. Phrenology was largely an individual pursuit. Most phrenologists supported women's rights, adopting the phrenological view of women as full human beings endowed with human potential. Many phrenologists used the science to argue for the mental equality of the sexes while others found evidence of particular strength in faculties traditionally associated with women like morality, benevolence, and religiosity. Female phrenologists like Lydia and Charlotte Fowler examined and lectured before audiences of women almost exclusively. The same was true in nearly all medical fields, regular or irregular, as modesty and social propriety tended to keep women and men separated, particularly in matters of the human body. But while it was rare for a woman phrenologist to give a head reading to a man, female patients could and did receive readings from practitioners of either sex.
³⁷

In 1838, the Fowlers began publishing the
American Phrenological Journal
, which quickly became one of the most widely read magazines in the nation and remained in circulation until 1911. They also published a library's worth of inexpensive books on health and reform topics. These publications advised readers on the best daily regimens of diet, work, and play for proper mental functioning. Others, many penned by Lydia, offered advice on marriage and on conceiving and raising children. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Fowlers' publications could be found all over the country, and phrenological ideas had become a part of everyday conversation.

The Fowlers' New York City offices, known as the Phrenological
Cabinet, became one of the most visited places in town. Combining the attractions and oddities of P. T. Barnum's American Museum, a carnival sideshow, and a scientific curiosity cabinet, the museum easily provided visitors a full day of entertainment. Busts, mummies, and paintings from around the world covered the walls and filled display cases. Visitors could look at the heads of murderers and pirates, as well as those of famous leaders like President John Quincy Adams and Julius Caesar. The Fowlers also had casts made from George Combe's extensive skull collection. The busts were particularly important, being one of the chief tools of the phrenologists' trade. The Fowlers also instructed others how to make their own head casts, though they recommended that followers first practice on an apple to get the hang of it before attempting a human head.
³⁸
These busts provided a road map of the head, demarcating all of the organs of the mind with clearly marked boundaries on a smooth-crowned model of the skull.
³⁹

Visitors could test their ability to judge character by viewing the collection that represented “racial types,” skulls of people from different races, and “persons of eminence in talent and virtue, and . . . those who were notorious for crime.”
⁴⁰
The idea that a man's character could be read led some to attempt to make determinations of the moral, intellectual, and social development of different human races based on the shape of their heads and jaws. After Charles Darwin popularized the idea that humans descended from apes, some saw different facial features like the protruding jaw and sloped forehead as signs of lower development and thus a closer relationship to primitive man, which became the basis of racial stereotyping. Classes were offered to teach phrenology to anyone who wanted to learn. The youngest Fowler, Charlotte, taught classes geared specifically toward women. Since admission was free, visitors came in hordes.
⁴¹

Tourists could take a piece of their visit to the Phrenological Cabinet home with a stroll through the museum's extensive gift shop. The Fowlers offered a set of seventy phrenological watercolors for thirty-five cents and phrenological busts, the particular specialty of Lorenzo, for sale as souvenirs. These “high quality” busts, “showing the exact location of all the Organs of the Brain,” sold for $1.25 and could be sent by freight or express for those who couldn't make the trip to New York.
⁴²
Lorenzo's original design can still be found for sale in novelty stores today.