This classic work of early neuroscience revolutionized our understanding of the brain and its functions. Written by one of the field's pioneers, it offers a detailed examination of the different areas of the brain and their roles in shaping human behavior and personality. Whether you're a scientist, a student, or simply someone interested in the inner workings of the brain, this book is an essential read. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

During the 1790s in Vienna, German physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) came forth with a new doctrine dealing with mind, brain and behavior—one that could account for individual differences. He maintained that there are many independent faculties of mind, each associated with a separate part of the brain. He fine-tuned his ideas and published two sets of books presenting them after he and his assistant, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, settled in Paris in 1807. Gall's ideas had many supporters but were controversial and unsettling to others. In particular, the opposition ridiculed his belief that skull features reflect the growth of specific, underlying cortical organs, and hence correlate with personality traits (i.e., his ‘bumpology’). Gall’s fundamental ideas about the mind and organization of the brain were debated across the globe, and they also began to be exploited by unscrupulous businessmen, ‘professors’ who ‘read skulls’ for a living. But, as some historians have shown, his ideas about mind, brain and behavior led to the modern neurosciences. The chapters collected in this volume provide new insights into Gall’s thinking and what Spurzheim did, and the faddish movement called ‘phrenology’, which originated as a science of humankind but became a popular source of entertainment. All chapters were originally published in various issues of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences.

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