Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Let's give it up for
Speaker 1: our number one super producer. You know him, you love him,
Speaker 1: Mr Max Williams. They called me ben uh Noel. I
Speaker 1: have to say, this is an episode that at least
Speaker 1: I have been waiting for for a number of years.
Speaker 1: It's like up there with the rescut and episode or
Speaker 1: the Nixon Voice episode for me. Yeah, those are both
Speaker 1: like mythical episodes that will probably never actually happen. With
Speaker 1: this one, my friends happening. This is real. It's also
Speaker 1: decidedly not real, utter pseudo science. And just really quickly,
Speaker 1: just to do a little housekeeping in case anyone notices
Speaker 1: my voice sending a little more echoe, it is because
Speaker 1: I am I'm podcasting from inside of a hollow void today,
Speaker 1: just to paint a picture. I'm moving out of my
Speaker 1: house and my studio is mainly I just realized, like
Speaker 1: with no stuff in the room, it sounds like a cave.
Speaker 1: So please forgive. Hopefully Max can maybe de verb it
Speaker 1: a little bit and do some production magic, but you
Speaker 1: may catch a little bit of he Oh, but that
Speaker 1: sounds good. You're you're dulcet toads are coming in. Uh,
Speaker 1: strong and true, strong and true, much more true than phrenology,
Speaker 1: which is they subject up today's episode. Weirdly enough, folks,
Speaker 1: this is not gonna be entirely us dunking on phrenology.
Speaker 1: This is actually the first part of a two part episode,
Speaker 1: because that's how into this idea we are, as well
Speaker 1: as our research associate Zac. So let's first off, if
Speaker 1: you're not driving, folks, feel around on your head. If
Speaker 1: you guys ever shaved your heads, do you have Do
Speaker 1: you have bumps in your heads? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I actually,
Speaker 1: which is surprising because I have like eighteen inches of
Speaker 1: heroin now. I have rucked the shaved head look much
Speaker 1: of my life, and I actually have a very very
Speaker 1: People always comment how round my head is. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: call you old smooth skull, right, that was your nickname
Speaker 1: back in grade school exactly, it was. You remember those
Speaker 1: days very well, know I know, I know I was
Speaker 1: there in spirit anyway. Yeah, I've got some ridges in
Speaker 1: the back of my head. Um. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 1: if they're just like fat rolls or not, but they
Speaker 1: are there. Um, but yeah, I'm a top. I've got
Speaker 1: a couple of distinct kind of bumpy spots. I don't
Speaker 1: think my fontinell ever closed either. So there's that. What's
Speaker 1: the font nill o, that's that thing they tell you
Speaker 1: not to poke on babies. You're like, you know, murder them.
Speaker 1: I have. I'm kidding. I think mine's closed. I was
Speaker 1: just doing it so silly joke. So I um, as
Speaker 1: a malungeon, we don't have to spend an episode on that.
Speaker 1: As a malungeon. There was growing up, there was a
Speaker 1: test people used to self administer in Tennessee and ridiculous
Speaker 1: historians and Nolan Max if you guys want to play along,
Speaker 1: one of the old tests for malungeon's was to take
Speaker 1: your take your hand and start at the nape of
Speaker 1: your neck where your hair kind of begins, and then
Speaker 1: go up and if you are luncheon, you might feel
Speaker 1: a tiny bump there at the base of your neck
Speaker 1: and your skull. That is called an Anatolian bump or
Speaker 1: a malungeon bump, and it was taken as evidence of someone's,
Speaker 1: you know, someone's providence. This is very unscientific, but you know,
Speaker 1: if you were a phrenologist, you would agree not only
Speaker 1: does that bump indicate someone be malungeon, but it also
Speaker 1: indicates stuff about their character. And if you were millions
Speaker 1: of Americans in the eighteen hundreds, you would be all
Speaker 1: about this. Chronology was like a Myers Briggs for people
Speaker 1: or an astrological chart. But the difference was they felt
Speaker 1: it was quite quite legitimate. Yeah, you know, it reminds
Speaker 1: me a lot though, of some of the arcane kind
Speaker 1: of medieval sciences, like the humors and all of that,
Speaker 1: and the idea of like drilling holes in your head
Speaker 1: to release demons. Only this is even more dangerous than
Speaker 1: that because that was backed entirely by like, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of conjecture and sort of like vague spiritualist kind
Speaker 1: of beliefs. This was back by what they believed the
Speaker 1: practitioners anyway, to be hard. Science of the mind. I
Speaker 1: can remember if this is a band or an album name,
Speaker 1: but mind Science of the Mind I always thought was
Speaker 1: very funny, And that's what this is. It's like imagined
Speaker 1: science involving the brain, but believed to be completely um,
Speaker 1: without fault uh and unimpeachably accurate. There's this guy named
Speaker 1: Richard Shannon Vix, who's a phrenologist in eight who said
Speaker 1: before phrenology, all we knew about the brain was how
Speaker 1: to slice it. Yeah, and he got a lot of
Speaker 1: applause with this. During its heyday, the practitioners of phrenology
Speaker 1: were kind of the pop science public figures of their time,
Speaker 1: the Neil Degrass Tyson's you know, they were the one
Speaker 1: the people making ted talks, and they owe a lot
Speaker 1: of their popularity to a physician named Franz Joseph gall
Speaker 1: Like gall Stone, he developed these theories on the anatomy
Speaker 1: and the function of the brain in Vienna in the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, same town where Sigmund Freud would later go
Speaker 1: on to uh form his own opinions about the workings
Speaker 1: of the mind. Yeah, it's funny. Phrenology really was kind
Speaker 1: of a precursor to psychology and the early days of
Speaker 1: psychology because we know, also had a lot of problems
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of pseudoscience and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of conjecture wrapped up in that as well. But
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about today. But it is fun
Speaker 1: to think about how kind of the trajectory of that,
Speaker 1: uh and even today there's a lot of distrust in psychology.
Speaker 1: It's it's not necessarily seen as much as a science
Speaker 1: as other things that are a little more measurable, because
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is, even today we know
Speaker 1: precious little about being our workings of the brain. Right,
Speaker 1: the human species still has no agreed upon definitionive intelligence.
Speaker 1: And that's something we were talking about earlier on stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. I believe what it
Speaker 1: was standardized testing. That's right, that's right, really great conversation
Speaker 1: is it's one of those topics we always kind of
Speaker 1: do a little caveat with or a little disclaimer that
Speaker 1: sounds like it could be a snooze, but you have
Speaker 1: no idea that conversation goes so many interesting places. And
Speaker 1: all three of us definitely had skin in the game,
Speaker 1: being products of kind of the standardized test nation, you
Speaker 1: know here in America. Oh, that's a good turn of phrase, man,
Speaker 1: that that would be a good title for a book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, We should we shoul write it. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: it's it's there's so much involved in the study of
Speaker 1: the mind and so many kind of thought leaders quote
Speaker 1: unquote that sort of lead the charge usually propelled by
Speaker 1: not much more than raw confidence and enthusiasm around their
Speaker 1: particular way of looking at it. And then if they're confident,
Speaker 1: enthusiastic enough and have just enough science to back it up,
Speaker 1: and I say Swiss, Swiss science, the quotation science, then
Speaker 1: people will follow suit and before you know it, there
Speaker 1: could be a whole lineage of tests and and theories
Speaker 1: and concepts based around something that at its root was
Speaker 1: in fact pretty dubious. Yeah, a hundred percent. And we
Speaker 1: we've introduced you to gall But which you need to
Speaker 1: know about Frunds is that he was a working physician.
Speaker 1: He had the skills. He also was a talented anatomist,
Speaker 1: and he spent a lot of time dissecting brains to
Speaker 1: learn about the origins and the pathways of cranial nerves.
Speaker 1: So his his revelatory moment really really happens when he
Speaker 1: is a kid. He notices growing up that his schoolmates,
Speaker 1: who are very very good at memorization, also tend to
Speaker 1: have really big eyes, kind of like fish eyes that
Speaker 1: stick out. And he said, I bet there's there's something
Speaker 1: behind that. I bet those eyes go somewhere that they
Speaker 1: there must be a part of the brain behind their
Speaker 1: eyes that the window to the soul. The bigger the window,
Speaker 1: the more light gets in to the soul. I mean
Speaker 1: that that's that works, right that it sounds like a
Speaker 1: childhood theory. We all have our childhood pet theories. He
Speaker 1: just never let it go, Nol. He just like he
Speaker 1: kept up with it. He kept up with it, And
Speaker 1: you're right, the whole idea of never letting it go
Speaker 1: really is one of those things that you not supposed
Speaker 1: to do with science. I mean, that's not true. You
Speaker 1: can be obsessed, you can be driven to try to
Speaker 1: find the truth. But this guy has sort of a
Speaker 1: preconceived notion based on an observation that was entirely um,
Speaker 1: you know visual. You know, it was like, oh, well
Speaker 1: look at this. Like it's like one of those causation
Speaker 1: correlation kind of deals where it's like, not necessarily one
Speaker 1: is not necessarily include the other, Like just because you
Speaker 1: observe that people with all that the people that you
Speaker 1: observe with big eyes are good at memorization, and therefore
Speaker 1: all people with big eyes must be good at memorization.
Speaker 1: That's not really good. And it's also a pretty small
Speaker 1: sample size. And he's just looking at his like schoolyard mates,
Speaker 1: you know. But yeah, so he decided that that this
Speaker 1: he came up with his concept based on this that
Speaker 1: the brain it was not a single organ and this
Speaker 1: is accurate, but but a but you know, myriad of
Speaker 1: various specialized parts that each governed different processes, uh, mental
Speaker 1: or emotional functions. And by the way, some of this
Speaker 1: information that we're talking about right here comes from a
Speaker 1: fabulous article from the Atlantic called wonderful title The Shape
Speaker 1: of Your Head and the Shape of Your Mind by
Speaker 1: Erica Janet from January definitely worth a full read. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he wasn't like barking entirely up the wrong uh the
Speaker 1: wrong cranial trunk. He had somewhat of a of a
Speaker 1: pretty forward thinking view of the brain. He believed that
Speaker 1: all of these parts each have their own dedicated tasks
Speaker 1: and and processes and govern different emotional and mental functions.
Speaker 1: Nobody's really Here's really kind of like lost the plot
Speaker 1: a little bit, it would seem. He believed that the
Speaker 1: size and development of each area, which he called faculties,
Speaker 1: were a way of measuring certain qualities and an individual
Speaker 1: that pertained to each of these functions, Like if this
Speaker 1: part is bigger than this person has a higher capacity
Speaker 1: for reasoning, or if this part is smaller than this
Speaker 1: person might tend to be more submissive. Um, these are
Speaker 1: things that we're going to get into and a bit
Speaker 1: in terms of how these were used in horrible, horrific
Speaker 1: and racist ways. Yes, yes, just so, I'd also like
Speaker 1: to shout out the article in Smithsonian by Mina Sirlander
Speaker 1: Morse facing a Bumpy History, which will come into play
Speaker 1: in part two of this episode. Actually, so, yeah, he
Speaker 1: was not entirely wrong at the basis. We know that
Speaker 1: parts of the brain do specific things, and his logic
Speaker 1: was pretty you know, it made sense, It was rational.
Speaker 1: He said, there's a brain beneath your skull, so just like, um,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't put it this way, but you know, just
Speaker 1: like a mountain, right or a canyon can indicate something
Speaker 1: going on beneath the surface of the earth, so can
Speaker 1: the topography of the skull reveal something about the brain.
Speaker 1: And like you said, he just took it too far.
Speaker 1: And later his followers, other phrenologists, would say, you can,
Speaker 1: through certain exercises and methods, strengthen pause of parts of
Speaker 1: your brain the same way exercise helps you build muscles.
Speaker 1: But interesting though he did not call this science of
Speaker 1: his phrenology. He actually called this originally cranioscopy. Uh. The
Speaker 1: term phrenology comes about in the eighteen hundreds when a
Speaker 1: guy named T. I. M. Forster coins he's a British
Speaker 1: physician and his name is a his name is an abbreviation.
Speaker 1: But I think it sounds I think really slaps to
Speaker 1: have it like robot? Is that his model? Like he's
Speaker 1: like a helper robot or something's n I M D.
Speaker 1: I am called made Tim. So phrenology was the kind
Speaker 1: of later version of this of the science, but I
Speaker 1: mean the same versions of the different label on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was the other one? Cranioscopy? That sounds that just
Speaker 1: sounds like quack science right there, doesn't know. It sounds
Speaker 1: like trepid nation almost. It sounds like a medical procedure, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, as it does phrenology at least has. I
Speaker 1: don't know why it matters or why we have these
Speaker 1: sorts of associations with words, but to me, phrenology sounds
Speaker 1: a little more proper, didn't It sounds a little more
Speaker 1: like a real science. Yeah, it does. It does sound
Speaker 1: for some reason more scientific and I looked up the
Speaker 1: I looked up the etymology, of course, and it's just
Speaker 1: mind plus logy. So it's like mind science. But but people, yeah,
Speaker 1: there we go spear Fingers. I love it. So we
Speaker 1: have kind of the nexus of the origin story. And
Speaker 1: we want to tip our craniums to psychologist Dr Paul Ealing,
Speaker 1: Professor Stanley Finger, and Professor Harry Whittaker. I know Finger,
Speaker 1: DUCR Finger, So anyway, uh they chase so doctor Finger,
Speaker 1: that's true. Figure out galls ultimate like what he nails
Speaker 1: down as this science that's later called phrenology. He says,
Speaker 1: you know, he called them faculties, like you point out,
Speaker 1: In all, he settles on twenties seven different distinct functions
Speaker 1: or faculties, and a lot of them are shared with humans,
Speaker 1: memory for locations, love and affection for offspring. But then
Speaker 1: there are other things he considered uniquely human that are
Speaker 1: very much like not in the realm of science, wit, poetry, religion,
Speaker 1: and uh ha to loftiness, elevation. I mean, we have
Speaker 1: a list of some of his some of the faculties
Speaker 1: he described, and some of them makes sense to me. Honestly,
Speaker 1: what the heck is hot tour is that like like
Speaker 1: hate cuisine, like sort of gorminus. Is that what hotetur means?
Speaker 1: You know? The Yeah, it's like tony posh high class.
Speaker 1: You know the meme where those three dudes are dressed
Speaker 1: like aristocrats and they're like snootily looking down the balcony.
Speaker 1: Do you know the one we're talking about. There's one
Speaker 1: there's there's that actor uh yeah, yeah, yeah, he's he's
Speaker 1: in the front, and then there's two guys in the
Speaker 1: usually some version of like I don't know and implying
Speaker 1: looking down upon peasants, and it's us looking. It's probably
Speaker 1: for you and me. It's probably like us looking at
Speaker 1: people who can't beat uh. The first the first boss
Speaker 1: at El Debree. Yeah, that's fair. Um. You know, I
Speaker 1: will say I did it with the help of the uh,
Speaker 1: the rotten stray uh. And that is a pretty powerful
Speaker 1: summit that you know, he bites Godrick and then he
Speaker 1: kind of basically just waste away from Scarlett Rock. So
Speaker 1: I sort of cheese it a little bit. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna lie so I barely deserve to have on those
Speaker 1: uh roughly caller and and and waving around that ankie
Speaker 1: at my my underlings. But I'll still do it, mind you,
Speaker 1: I'll still do it. Oh yeah, Qualifications never stop people
Speaker 1: from being from being prideful. Also, I like the deranged
Speaker 1: perfumer spirit ash and the skeletal Militiaman will come back repeatedly.
Speaker 1: Skeletal militiaman. Dope, do not know the deranged perfumer, but
Speaker 1: my imagination is going wild. Perfumer in this game means
Speaker 1: to completely different than I think we think of as
Speaker 1: a traditional perfumer. Yes, okay, sorry, Max, come on moving.
Speaker 1: I'll ever understand you don't understand, as Max, I was
Speaker 1: playing Scarum all the weekend. It was awesome. I love truth, honestly,
Speaker 1: I love it. Is it two thousand five? I was
Speaker 1: surprised by that, but yeah, Morowitch is Oblivion and Skyram
Speaker 1: all came out back to back to back, and its
Speaker 1: finanvers since we've had one, and it's probably gonna be
Speaker 1: another three or fourth to get another one. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: there's one on the way. And anyway, I sorry we're
Speaker 1: boring you with our description, with our enjoyment, our happiness
Speaker 1: with elden Ring. But okay, al right, back to back
Speaker 1: to our brain bumps. Uh. There are other things like
Speaker 1: the like, tell me what you think about this one
Speaker 1: talent for music, the faculty of the relations of numbers
Speaker 1: being good at math, or the faculty of spoken language.
Speaker 1: Those sound a little bit more. Those sound a little
Speaker 1: bit more legit, like something the brain can actually do,
Speaker 1: versus some predisposition to hot tour. But again it all
Speaker 1: breaks down because he thought these were, you know, skull bumps.
Speaker 1: Skull bumps sounds. It's like it's being completely different too.
Speaker 1: I just saw I think today about coming called caviare
Speaker 1: bumps that it's so like a thing actually something I
Speaker 1: hote tour would be into. It's like the idea of
Speaker 1: taking caviar and doing little bumps of it like you
Speaker 1: would snortable drugs. It's weird. But here we are back
Speaker 1: to skull bumps. So we've got these characteristics um that
Speaker 1: Gall described now being supported by Sir Tim's um new
Speaker 1: you know, coined phrenology concept, and it's all kind of
Speaker 1: coming together and really starting to pick up some steam.
Speaker 1: So Gall also believes that the two hemispheres of the
Speaker 1: brain were actually interchangeable and had similar functions. Of course,
Speaker 1: what we know now is that that's not the case
Speaker 1: at all. Um, we believed that if one should sustain damage,
Speaker 1: the other would compensate, sort of like having two kidneys
Speaker 1: or something like that. But again, we know the left
Speaker 1: hemisphere of the brand the right hemisphere of the brain
Speaker 1: do completely different things. Um. During the nineteenth century things
Speaker 1: really started to take off for Gall. He did a
Speaker 1: series of lectures alongside a guy named Johann Caspar sport
Speaker 1: Tim who was a protege of his, another physician. They
Speaker 1: were still think of them as like sort of the
Speaker 1: ted Talks of the day. They really like almost went viral,
Speaker 1: and these concepts started to be picked up on by
Speaker 1: some other very well established people in the scientific community,
Speaker 1: or at the very least the community of of of
Speaker 1: money and nobles. Yeah. Yeah, And one of the things
Speaker 1: we have to realize is that this appealed to people's vanity,
Speaker 1: just like a horoscope, you know what I mean. They
Speaker 1: were able to say, oh, let me think more about myself.
Speaker 1: Humans love doing that, It's like one of their main things.
Speaker 1: And that's why people flocked to these folks and the
Speaker 1: phrenologists of the day, who for the most part were
Speaker 1: not con artists, they weren't flim flammers. They legitimately believed
Speaker 1: in what they were doing. That's why they wrote books
Speaker 1: about it. They popularized the science. We're thinking of folks
Speaker 1: like the Scottish lawyer George Combe who wrote books like
Speaker 1: Elements of Phrenology, and he seems to he tend us
Speaker 1: to agree with a lot of galls initial findings. Man.
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting distinction that you just made
Speaker 1: between these folks in this kind of school of thought
Speaker 1: and maybe like the snake oil kind of peddlers of
Speaker 1: eras to come, you know, with like the idea of
Speaker 1: of medicine and wonder cures and tonics and all of
Speaker 1: that stuff. It really calls into question or brings up
Speaker 1: the idea of belief, like if you're if you believe
Speaker 1: in something that's entirely wrong, and you're basing like you know,
Speaker 1: theories and and and and and remedies and science and
Speaker 1: things that will change people's lives, not only necessarily for
Speaker 1: the better, on these kind of you know, misconceptions. Does
Speaker 1: that make you any better necessarily than someone who is
Speaker 1: actively conning. I would argue yes, But also you have
Speaker 1: to wonder did some of those snake oil salesman truly
Speaker 1: believe in the wondrous miracles of their care as they
Speaker 1: were peddling. Oh ad percent, there were some people who
Speaker 1: were going to make a buck. You'd go to a
Speaker 1: very well to do person and give them a reading. Right,
Speaker 1: getting your skull read it was a very, very big deal.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure there were people who like grease the
Speaker 1: cranium a little bit or embellished the good news so
Speaker 1: that they could get a better payout and get repeat
Speaker 1: customers and get recommendations right word of mouth spreads. This
Speaker 1: guy Comb is really interesting because here's how you know
Speaker 1: he believed in it. He was such a believer in
Speaker 1: the accuracy of phrenology that when he and the lady
Speaker 1: he was courting decided to get married, he said he
Speaker 1: would not do it until they had both undergone an
Speaker 1: examination to determine whether they were phrenologically. I guess, uh,
Speaker 1: it's compatible phrenologically, and yeah, let it go. Keep it in.
Speaker 1: But uh, but just like you would take a horoscope
Speaker 1: birthday compatibility quiz on your social media of choice, that's
Speaker 1: what they did. It was like the deal breaker for
Speaker 1: his marriage. If their bumps weren't vibing, he was going
Speaker 1: to call the whole thing off. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You know. While gall was you know, really reveling in
Speaker 1: the limelight, you know, in the scientific community and being
Speaker 1: treated as something of a kind of a prophet of
Speaker 1: the future of science, there's some folks that didn't care
Speaker 1: for that too much, specifically clergy high officials in the
Speaker 1: Church who believed that these ideas are the ability even
Speaker 1: for another human being to make these kinds of distinctions
Speaker 1: about God's creations was in fact heresy, and I need
Speaker 1: you know to the State of Austria actually prohibited him
Speaker 1: from promoting his theories there because of you know, these
Speaker 1: religious concerns and the fact that the state was mad
Speaker 1: about it and the church was mad about it made
Speaker 1: it even more popular to the public. Right, who doesn't
Speaker 1: loved every time happens every time. So he's becoming increasingly
Speaker 1: disconnected from Austria. He's touring across Europe and he's telling them,
Speaker 1: you know, here's the stuff Austria doesn't want you to know.
Speaker 1: And in eighteen o five, with his former student now
Speaker 1: protege Johann Spurzheim, he's schedattled across the pond. He left
Speaker 1: Austria for good. And this is where things believe You're
Speaker 1: not really take off of phrenology because, yeah, it's popular
Speaker 1: in Europe, but it becomes even more popular in the
Speaker 1: United States of America because it reinforces the American zeitgeist,
Speaker 1: the idea of self determination, individualism, you know, the can doitiveness. So, uh, Spursheim,
Speaker 1: things don't end well for him though. He is on
Speaker 1: a whirlwind lecture tour in eighteen thirty two, and maybe
Speaker 1: he's working too hard. This tour results in his death
Speaker 1: after just six months. Yeah, and at this point the
Speaker 1: kind of keys the phrenology Kingdom get passed on to
Speaker 1: a ministry student by the name of Orson Fowler, who
Speaker 1: believed that he had found his you know, life's passion
Speaker 1: and and true calling in a spurt times theory and
Speaker 1: this practice, this polemical practice. So Fowler started lecturing as well.
Speaker 1: He would basically spread the word to anyone that would listen,
Speaker 1: especially at his to his classmates at Amherst College in Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: UM and he would do readings for two cents a piece.
Speaker 1: It's like sort of like uh like Lucy or no, yeah,
Speaker 1: Lucy is it Lucy? And peanuts who did like the
Speaker 1: therapy for five cents. I think his was a little cheaper.
Speaker 1: Um same idea though, you know, it's like let's let's
Speaker 1: let's read our own kind of quack scientific theories, uh,
Speaker 1: and actually charge people for it. But it's affordable. People
Speaker 1: wanted to listen. So one friend in particular, Um was
Speaker 1: a guy who would become the Reverend Henry Ward. Beecher
Speaker 1: and Fowler believed that this gentleman possessed something called that
Speaker 1: he referred to anyway as a strong social brain with
Speaker 1: very large benevolence. It's funny too in the in the text,
Speaker 1: benevolence is capitalized almost like it's like sacred in something.
Speaker 1: And orson Um really was able to kind of spread
Speaker 1: this thought by just again the virtue of enthusiasm and
Speaker 1: and and confidence, and just like this is the truth.
Speaker 1: You know, when someone says something with enough conviction, you
Speaker 1: tend to want to pay attention. That's how a lot
Speaker 1: of hucksters work. But again a lot of hucksters don't
Speaker 1: even know their hucksters. They're just high on their own supply,
Speaker 1: drinking their own coolat, or any other number of cliche
Speaker 1: expressions for you know, being kind of up your own backside.
Speaker 1: And we should also say in the context of this.
Speaker 1: We we mentioned that Spurzheim died, but when he died,
Speaker 1: it was considered a huge loss to the medical community
Speaker 1: across the Western world. Ralph Waldo Emerson called him one
Speaker 1: of the world's greatest minds. The president of Harvard handled
Speaker 1: spurs Tim's funeral arrangements. The American Journal of Medical Science said,
Speaker 1: the prophet is gone, but his mantle is upon us.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the world in which Orson Fowler steps in.
Speaker 1: Is the clear kind of air to this throne of skulls,
Speaker 1: which sounds kind of metal. I like it. That's the
Speaker 1: throne of skulls. And think about it. He's off, he's
Speaker 1: saying he's talking to important people, thought influencers, movers and shakers,
Speaker 1: and he's telling very nice things about themselves. You know,
Speaker 1: his little brother joins the phrase, Lorenzo Fowler, and they
Speaker 1: have found kind of a new religion in phrenology because
Speaker 1: they both were once you know, they were both once
Speaker 1: ministry students. That's so interesting, how you know there was
Speaker 1: this backlash by the church, you know, against Gauls theories
Speaker 1: to the point where they tried to shut him down.
Speaker 1: And now it's almost going full circle. Where these like
Speaker 1: former religious kind of zealous, I mean the stuff. Probably
Speaker 1: they were probably still believers to some degree, but instead
Speaker 1: of spreading the gospel you know, of Jesus that spread
Speaker 1: in the Gospel of of of skull theory just so.
Speaker 1: And they also, uh, they're also of course charging people
Speaker 1: a little every time they do these reads. And this
Speaker 1: takes off. There's something really interesting French ridiculous historians. I'm
Speaker 1: sure this is no longer the case, but for a
Speaker 1: while in France there was this strange evaluation for employment.
Speaker 1: Sometimes employers would ask you to hand right things and
Speaker 1: then they would have a handwriting analysis applied, and that
Speaker 1: could herman whether you or the other guy got the job.
Speaker 1: Employers in the US at this point start advertising for
Speaker 1: employees with particular phrenological profiles, and sometimes they said, look,
Speaker 1: we need you to get a reading from one of
Speaker 1: the Fowler boys. Women began changing their haircuts to show
Speaker 1: off their perceived good bump features skull bumps and you know,
Speaker 1: gradients and whatnot. Thats been cobb, is it not? And
Speaker 1: that's like that's like almost like some stuff you would
Speaker 1: make up and like some sort of weirdo future sci
Speaker 1: fi world where it's like people have like some sort
Speaker 1: of strange cranial protrusions and they like it. It's like
Speaker 1: some sort of new mating ritual or something. This is
Speaker 1: very bizarre to me heart degree. And again, these people
Speaker 1: were just as intelligent as anybody else, and they're just
Speaker 1: as intelligent as the people alive now. In they thought
Speaker 1: they were on the forefront of science, in part at
Speaker 1: least because it told them things they wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: Everybody sat for readings, to the point where it was
Speaker 1: almost like owning a cell phone. Today, it will be
Speaker 1: unusual for you to not have someone reading your skull.
Speaker 1: By the eighteen forties, the Fowler's HQ in New York,
Speaker 1: which they called the Phrenological Cabinet, was one of the
Speaker 1: most popular destinations in town. It was partially a museum,
Speaker 1: but it was also a place where you could get
Speaker 1: readings and then they would hold lectures on, you know,
Speaker 1: the latest developments in phrenology. They had a lot of
Speaker 1: portraits of famous people's heads totally. They even like would
Speaker 1: have these like kind of death mask almostly well plaster
Speaker 1: cat only death masks, that's just like the face. But
Speaker 1: they would like commission when like famous people would pass away.
Speaker 1: I don't know how they would go about this, but
Speaker 1: they would commission, like, you know, plaster casts of their heads.
Speaker 1: And I guess they were so popular and so beloved
Speaker 1: they were able to do this through like legitimate channels,
Speaker 1: right absolutely, And people thought this knowledge was a way
Speaker 1: to empower themselves. Right, they could focus on shaping their
Speaker 1: own future, to appeal to American individualism by saying, you know,
Speaker 1: now that you know this about yourself, you can work
Speaker 1: toward becoming a better you. Right, like one example, that's interesting,
Speaker 1: and it would have been a total pr move. Again,
Speaker 1: even if they believed it, I think they obviously knew
Speaker 1: how to institute some showmanship around this stuff and that
Speaker 1: influence that they wielded. They were able to order a
Speaker 1: plaster cast of Aaron Burr's head when he passed away
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty six. There and Burr, of course, is
Speaker 1: the man who shot Alexander Hamilton's I, which has been
Speaker 1: massive you know, national news. Absolutely, you know, people on
Speaker 1: the edge of their seats. And they were able to
Speaker 1: do this and then report upon examination that Burr's head
Speaker 1: the bumps contained um organs of secretiveness and destructiveness that
Speaker 1: were of course in large, and I just want to
Speaker 1: point out nearly our third president in American history, Aaron Burr. Yes,
Speaker 1: so damn close. I don't know if you guys remember this.
Speaker 1: There was an Oreos commercial when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and I can't remember exactly what the setup was, but
Speaker 1: the punchline was some historian like saying, Aaron Burr trying
Speaker 1: to answer this question, and he's got a mouthful of oreos,
Speaker 1: so he just goes. I always thought that was really funny. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: that's something good that came from Burke. The Fowlers made
Speaker 1: this set plan using phrenologies of basis. They said, we
Speaker 1: are going to completely up end society and improve it.
Speaker 1: We're creating a perfect socialist, more real system. We're taking
Speaker 1: all the science that could improve the mind or benefits
Speaker 1: mankind and it will make a better world. And to
Speaker 1: your point about commercialization, they also just happened to be
Speaker 1: the people who sold all the accoutremal you needed to
Speaker 1: make this happen. It's like Apple coming out and saying
Speaker 1: iPods are going to save the world. You can also
Speaker 1: only buy them here, so totally. Yeah, be apart be
Speaker 1: the change you want to see in the world. With us,
Speaker 1: with our help and our help alone. Uh yeah, because
Speaker 1: I mean they probably have like proprietary tools, like you know,
Speaker 1: those like calipers for measuring the skulls. And it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where you could probably could have made
Speaker 1: your own and and you know, pursued your own study
Speaker 1: of phrenology. But in those days, it's not like they
Speaker 1: had YouTube or other means to find out this stuff.
Speaker 1: If you wanted the literature, you had to get it
Speaker 1: from the source, let alone like specialized tools and things.
Speaker 1: And I don't know this for a fact, but I
Speaker 1: imagine there must be some really fascinating collects of some
Speaker 1: of this kind of memorabilia, uh in in in the
Speaker 1: United States. I wouldn't be surprised if the Motor Museum
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia maybe had some weird phrenology stuff. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I used to have one of those reproductions of a
Speaker 1: phrenology skull map or whatever they're called. Can you describe
Speaker 1: that to as it's something we've been kind of hinting around,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of people have probably seen them,
Speaker 1: But it's a it's an interesting thing that really took
Speaker 1: on like such a widespread kind of life of its own. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it essentially like depending on what kind of UM
Speaker 1: model you're looking at, because there were multiple You would
Speaker 1: see ahead usually male looking head with no hair, and
Speaker 1: atop the cranium from like the bottom of your eyebrows,
Speaker 1: two around your ears to the back of your skull.
Speaker 1: There would be these maps that describe what is happening
Speaker 1: in your brain and apparently what you can glean from
Speaker 1: the shape of the skull above it self see things
Speaker 1: like sublimity, cautiousness, destructiveness, combative secretiveness. That's what they were
Speaker 1: looking at. For Aaron Burr, they were actually to pay
Speaker 1: on the model. They were like looking a little bit
Speaker 1: above his left ear to see if anything great was
Speaker 1: going on. And although yes, we're dunking on it a
Speaker 1: little bit because this is clearly pseudoscience, it might interest
Speaker 1: a lot of our fellow ridiculous historians to know that
Speaker 1: phrenology is a movement was in some ways surprisingly progressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. There was almost like a women's lib kind
Speaker 1: of like subculture of phrenology UM. After her marriage to
Speaker 1: Lorenzo Fowler, Lydia Folger started lecturing on phrenology. She caught
Speaker 1: the bug as well, but she applied it specifically to
Speaker 1: the lives of women and in their place in society.
Speaker 1: So if you had like a woman who is a
Speaker 1: phrenologist kind of like on board, it was a big
Speaker 1: deal for the fowlers in general because it allowed a
Speaker 1: lot of women to kind of come into the fold
Speaker 1: because again they were providing useful or very least flattering
Speaker 1: information to them as well. And this has been seen
Speaker 1: largely assembing for men. That was used to understand the
Speaker 1: workings of the minds of men, and then it wasn't
Speaker 1: really including women. Um. But in eighteen forty nine, when
Speaker 1: she was only twenty seven, Lydia actually enrolled in a
Speaker 1: then newly established Central Medical College of Syracuse and Rochester.
Speaker 1: In the Central Medical College there was kind of a
Speaker 1: bit of a modernist bench to the medical school, sort
Speaker 1: of eclectic as it's referred to, which included things like
Speaker 1: holistic medicine, plant remedies, hygiene, diet um. And she got
Speaker 1: her medical degree and became the second woman in the
Speaker 1: United States to do that, and then she was able
Speaker 1: to kind of become this voice for women in the
Speaker 1: world of phrenology, which was becoming more and more mainstream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Phrenology was also decent intralized, so there wasn't an
Speaker 1: overall structure or hierarchy. It was kind of an individualistic
Speaker 1: pursuit with no national association. And most people I saw
Speaker 1: a chronologist, once you got the reading one time, you
Speaker 1: didn't come back and say, hey, I've been doing a
Speaker 1: lot of cognitive pull ups. Have my bumps changed? You
Speaker 1: just took what they said at that time, and most
Speaker 1: chronologists supported women's rights and said, look, women are human beings.
Speaker 1: They have all the same potential as men, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them use this to argue for the equality
Speaker 1: of the sexes. And it had a lot of good
Speaker 1: things in that respect, socially progressive things. But as we
Speaker 1: saw apart one of today's episode, we have to take
Speaker 1: a bit of a turn. Just like earlier I said,
Speaker 1: people back then were as intelligent as they are now.
Speaker 1: So it should be no surprise that despite how good
Speaker 1: phrenology made everybody feel, there were a lot of skeptics
Speaker 1: who said, okay, alright, alright, pump your brakes. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we're on the money here. Because as this
Speaker 1: was gaining such mainstream popularity, there was of course parallel
Speaker 1: science going on good science that we're finding some pretty
Speaker 1: contradictory things that were really casting a pretty negative light
Speaker 1: on phrenology, or at the very least the science of phrenology,
Speaker 1: because a lot of this was confirmation bias, where it
Speaker 1: was like seeking results, seeking particular answers. As we mentioned,
Speaker 1: part of what made this so popular was the fact
Speaker 1: that you could give someone a reading that would kind
Speaker 1: of make them feel good about themselves or make them
Speaker 1: feel like they were in some way special because of
Speaker 1: these specialized parts of their brain. But when you start
Speaker 1: to look at a larger selection of individuals, you might see,
Speaker 1: for example, uh, someone having a very well developed organ
Speaker 1: that you know, it dictates their benevolence um, but they're
Speaker 1: not very benevolent people at all. And this was usually
Speaker 1: they found a way to explain it away by referring
Speaker 1: to other organs that might counteract the size of that
Speaker 1: particular organ. So there was always a way, like in
Speaker 1: most kind of scams, to explain contradictory evidence. Um. But
Speaker 1: then he started to get other, you know, serious scientists
Speaker 1: that were looking into this, and they weren't able to
Speaker 1: be misled or argued with so easily. Yeah, a hundred
Speaker 1: percent man like the doctors, scientists, some religious figures, and
Speaker 1: even politicians, as we mentioned earlier, had plenty of negative
Speaker 1: stuff to say about phrenology, and their criticism was valid.
Speaker 1: One French scientist, Laurie Jean Pierre Laurenz became like goals
Speaker 1: arch nemesses and he is always saying phnology is malarkey.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you why, doctor Gall. Here's what,
Speaker 1: here's what Marie Jean Pierre did this. This scientist said, okay,
Speaker 1: let me take all your uh phrenology theories about animals, okay,
Speaker 1: and let me dissect the brains of rabbits, birds and
Speaker 1: dogs and see how the remaining sections function. And all
Speaker 1: the evidence from all his experiments ghoulish as they were,
Speaker 1: proved that Gall was incorrect. The brain acted as a
Speaker 1: whole unit and not just as like street irreplaceable parts.
Speaker 1: Harvard professor Oliver Wendell Holmes UH said he also drew
Speaker 1: exception to this. We've actually we've got a quote from him.
Speaker 1: That's right. He said, the walls of the head are double,
Speaker 1: with a great air chamber between them. Over the smallest
Speaker 1: and most closely crowded organs. Can you tell how much
Speaker 1: money there isn't a safe which also has thick double
Speaker 1: walls by kneeding its knobs with your fingers. So when
Speaker 1: a man fumbles about my forehead and talks about the
Speaker 1: organs of individuality, size, etcetera, I trust him as much
Speaker 1: as I should if he felt the outside of my
Speaker 1: strong box and told me there was a five dollar
Speaker 1: or a ten dollar bill under this or that particular rivet.
Speaker 1: But shots fired. Um, we had another guy, you know,
Speaker 1: another Again, we're talking about these like very serious scientists
Speaker 1: in Washington, d c At Professor Thomas Sewell, who also
Speaker 1: rejected phrenology as a way of understanding the brain. He
Speaker 1: said that brain injuries almost never affected bodily function in
Speaker 1: the way that was predicted by phrenology. In addition, he
Speaker 1: said that the brain couldn't possibly be measured from the
Speaker 1: skull alone. Uh, And that goes hand in hand with
Speaker 1: what Oliver Wendell Holmes said so expertly and that strong
Speaker 1: box analogy. So let's just also note that, you know,
Speaker 1: while Holmes didn't necessarily say that phrenology was entirely useless,
Speaker 1: he did feel like it's true scientific nature was at
Speaker 1: best built on not very sturdy ground. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: he had other snarkier critics as well, Samuel Clemens Street
Speaker 1: name Mark Twain. He said that Fowler has found in
Speaker 1: my skull a cavity where humor ought to be. John
Speaker 1: Quincy Adams said, you know, I wonder how for I
Speaker 1: just can you look at each other in the eye
Speaker 1: without laughing? And I added that but it was it
Speaker 1: was there. I'm sure the story right right, And later
Speaker 1: in the editors over it. Encyclopedia Britannica wanted to debunk phrenology,
Speaker 1: so in their definition of the Encyclopedia, this is a
Speaker 1: true story. They published instead of just a basic definition,
Speaker 1: a seven page rebuke of the whole idea, and they
Speaker 1: clearly had an ax to grind. And you don't want
Speaker 1: to make an editor mad and nol. I gotta say,
Speaker 1: I'm glad we made this a two parter on purpose,
Speaker 1: because this is like, this is already pretty long, and
Speaker 1: this is just part one. We haven't even gotten to
Speaker 1: the dark side of phrenology. Well, I think we've done.
Speaker 1: And huge thanks to Zach Williams for, you know, digging
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff up for us. It's an
Speaker 1: excellent and fascinating topic. And just in the backstory that
Speaker 1: we've kind of gotten to so far, but it really
Speaker 1: does take a turn two more that I think some
Speaker 1: of the associations people might have with phrenology are It
Speaker 1: depends on who you are and where you're from and
Speaker 1: how much you've dug into this. But um, there are
Speaker 1: kind of echoes in this history of abject racism. I'm
Speaker 1: using some of these tools as a way to keep
Speaker 1: people down and justify some of the most detestable institutions
Speaker 1: in the history of the world. Agreed, and we hope
Speaker 1: that you tune in to learn more about phrenology Part
Speaker 1: two of this two part series. Thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our super producer, Mr Max Williams, Thanks to all of
Speaker 1: you fellow ridiculous historians, and shout out to everybody just
Speaker 1: looked up uh phrenology head map or has been awkwardly
Speaker 1: feeling around the top of your head throughout the course
Speaker 1: of this episode. We hope he dug it. Can't wait
Speaker 1: to hear your phrenological results. I gotta wonder, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, of course, we'll have the quiz to return soon, nol,
Speaker 1: but I'm thinking I bet Jonathan knows more than we
Speaker 1: might assume about phrenology right because he shaves his head.
Speaker 1: He does, but I will tell you he's he's this
Speaker 1: guy in the Smooth Skull Club with with with Mr
Speaker 1: Max over here. Yeah, and so thanks to thanks to
Speaker 1: the quister. And what does that mean? What if you're
Speaker 1: completely smooth? You got no bumps at all? You got
Speaker 1: no bumps bumps? Uh man. We're also going to chaos,
Speaker 1: pure chaos magic. We're also gonna get into how this
Speaker 1: this kind of bump analysis started to extend to like
Speaker 1: facial features as well, and like, oh, the nose on
Speaker 1: that guy means that he's not he's not up to
Speaker 1: the task of whatever job he's applying for. Like it
Speaker 1: kind of makes me think of that's where like the
Speaker 1: idea of I like the cut of your jib came from. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And we'll get into the etymology of cutting your jib
Speaker 1: as well. We'll learn about something from predecessors of phrenology.
Speaker 1: All in all, can't wait. We're gonna get weird with it.
Speaker 1: Please join us later this week. Shout out to, of course,
Speaker 1: our composer Alex Williams. Shout out to the rest of
Speaker 1: the Ridiculous History crew, our pals. Heve's Jeff Coach, Christopher
Speaker 1: Hasiotis and no, you know shout out to us. Shoutouts
Speaker 1: are nifty craniums. I guess yeah, Well you got out, Tom,
Speaker 1: all right, um, We'll see you next time. Books. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.