Phrenology : how to read the head.

Date:
[between 1890 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Phrenology : how to read the head. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/68 (page 4)
    In this manner, each presented a character peculiar to him¬ self, and Dr. Gall observed that the individual who in one year had displayed selfish or knavish dispositions, never became in the next a good and faithful friend. The scholars with whom Dr. Gall had the greatest diffi¬ culty in competing, were those who learned by heart with great facility; and such individuals frequently gained from him by their repetitions, the places which he had won by the merit of his original compositions. Some years afterwards, having changed his place of residence, he still met individuals endowed with an equally great talent of learning to repeat. He then observed, that his schoolfellows, so gifted, possessed prominent eyes, and recollected that his rivals in the first school had been dis¬ tinguished by the same peculiarity. When he entered the university, he directed his attention, from the first, to the students whose eyes were of this description, and found that they excelled in getting rapidly by heart, and giving correct recitations, although many of them were by no means distinguished in point of general talent. This fact was recognised also by the other students in the classes; and, although the connection between the talent and the external sign was not at this time established upon such complete evidence as is requisite for a philosophical conclusion, Dr. Gall could not believe that the coincidence of the two circum¬ stances was entirely accidental. From that period, there¬ fore, he suspected that they stood in an important relation to each other. After much reflection, he conceived, that if memory for words was indicated by an external sign, the same might be the case with other intellectual powers; and afterwards, all individuals distinguished by any remarkable faculty became the objects of his attention. By degrees, he conceived himself to have found external signs which indicated a decided disposition for painting, music, and the mechanical arts. He also became acquainted with some individuals remarkable for the decision of their character, and in whose heads he observed a particular part to be very