Franz Gall

1758-1828

Known for his role in disseminating phrenology (he called it cranioscopy).

When Franz Josef Gall was born in Baden, it was a state of the Holy Roman Empire. He lived during the French Revolutionary Wars and the empire's dissolution. Baden became its own Grand Duchy. By the time of his death, Baden joined the German Confederation and was a hub of revolutionary activity.

Franz Gall was born a Catholic. In fact, his family had intended for him to become a priest, but he decided to pursue medicine instead. He studied medicine in Vienna, Austria, worked in an insane asylum, opened his own practice, and somewhere along the line, he became fascinated with organology and cranioscopy. He developed some theories about head shapes and psychology. Exempli gratia,

• Pantomime is a universal
• Larger brains aren't necessarily smarter, but a brain that is too small will exhibit defects.
• Recognition, poetic talent, greed, and murder instincts are based on brain shape.

Wait a minute... Did you catch that? He's saying that murder and greed aren't flaws in judgment, they're just a flaw in brain shape! And if you can say "my brain shape made me do it," how could you hold anybody accountable for their own actions? It's kind of like the insanity plea to get out of jail time, except you would make a funny-head-shape plea in order to excuse all your vices! He is completely uprooting all responsibility and morality! 

How did the world react to Dr. Gall?

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 

• Condemned his theory as contrary to the truths of religion and morality.

AUSTRIA

• Banned Gall as a threat to public morality, accused him of extreme materialism.

REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE

• Gall moved to France, hoping they would be receptive to his theory.
• Even though France was also anti-religion and materialistic at the time, Napoleon and the Institute of France denounced Gall's science as invalid.

So it seemed that nobody was falling for it. It was bad philosophy, bad science, and its acceptance would have terrible consequences. Franz Gall was being overshadowed by his contemporary, Franz Mesmer. Would this be the end of phrenology? Who would ever be gullible enough to believe it? Sadly, we were.

ENGLAND

• Phrenology became popular as the people of the Victorian era (1837-1901) would attend science lectures for entertainment.
• Used phrenology to justify the subjugation of their native colonial subjects based on head shape.

UNITED STATES

• Used phrenology from the 1820s to the 1850s to claim superiority over African slaves based on head shape.

BELGIUM, CANADA, BRAZIL

• Paul Bouts (1900-1999), a Belgian Catholic priest, spread phrenology in his country and in the new world, using it to promote evolutionary theory. He also promoted graphology, which present-day companies use to hire employees based on handwriting.

RWANDA

• Belgian colonial authorities in the 1930s used phrenology to argue for the superiority of Tutsis over Hutus

NAZI GERMANY

• Used phrenology to "prove" the superiority of the Aryan race.

In my MCAT studies, I've been assured that it's finally dead and definitively disproven. I hope that's true, but history's lessons are so quickly forgotten. In the year 2000, Dr. Steven Novella, wrote an article about phrenology responding to a promoter of phrenology in 1998:

Peter Van den Bossche: The Loose Foundations of Criticism against Phrenology. 

"It would be an absurdity to reject Phrenology as such, without first assessing the value of the science, as is unfortunately too often done today. Extensive experimental verification of the Phrenological localizations have proven their practical value. The Phrenological analysis of personality remains of incomparable value to assess the character."

Steven Novella, MD: Phrenology: History of a Neuroscience 

"As this example shows, criticisms of phrenology are dismissed as a-priori and arguments from authority. The actual scientific criticisms of phrenology, as outlined in this article, are not addressed or even acknowledged. Further, the claim of “extensive experimental verification” is not referenced, and is therefore unsubstantiated hearsay. In fact, there are no double-blinded verifications of phrenological localizations. Phrenology was rejected after scientists failed to replicate Gall’s claims, and 200 years of subsequent neuroscience has shown phrenology to be false. Modern phrenologists, however, make no accounting of the advances in neuroscience."