Edinburgh Phrenological Society
Chambers Street, Edinburgh bears sculpted portraits of prominent figures in the field of phrenology. | |
Formation | 1820 |
---|---|
Founders | George Combe and Andrew Combe |
Dissolved | The last recorded meeting of the Society took place in 1870. The Society's museum closed in 1886. |
The Edinburgh Phrenological Society was founded in 1820 by
The central concept of
Edinburgh phrenologists included George and Andrew Combe; asylum doctor and reformer
Background
Phrenology emerged from the views of the medical doctor and scientific researcher Franz Joseph Gall in 18th-century Vienna. Gall suggested that facets of the mind corresponded to regions of the brain, and that it was possible to determine character traits by examining the shape of a person's skull. This "craniological" aspect was greatly extended by his one-time disciple, Johann Spurzheim, who coined the term phrenology and saw it as a means of advancing society by social reform (improving the material conditions of human life).[5][unreliable medical source?]
In 1815, the
Founding and function
"Mental dispositions are determined by the size and constitution of the brain... and these are transmitted by hereditary descent..." George Combe The Constitution of Man in relation to External Objects (1828)
The Edinburgh Phrenological Society was founded on 22 February 1820, by the Combe brothers with the support of the Evangelical minister David Welsh.[9] The Society grew rapidly; in 1826, it had 120 members, an estimated one third of whom had a medical background.[10] The Society acquired large numbers of phrenological artefacts, such as marked porcelain heads indicating the location of cerebral organs, and endocranial casts of individuals with unusual personalities. Their museum was located on Chambers Street.[11]
Members published articles, gave lectures, and defended phrenology. Critics included philosopher
In 1823, Andrew Combe addressed the Royal Medical Society in a debate, arguing that phrenology explained the intellectual and moral abilities of mankind.[12] Both sides claimed victory after the lengthy debate, but the Medical Society refused to publish an account.[12] This prompted the Edinburgh Phrenological Society to establish its own journal in 1824: The Phrenological Journal and Miscellany, later renamed Phrenological Journal and Magazine of Moral Science.[13]
In the mid-1820s, a split emerged between the Christian phrenologists and Combe's closer associates. Matters came to a head when Combe and his supporters passed a motion banning the discussion of theology in the Society, effectively silencing their critics. In response, David Welsh and other evangelical members left the Society.[14]
In December 1826, the atheistic phrenologist William A.F. Browne caused a sensation at the university's Plinian Society with an attack on the recently republished theories of Charles Bell concerning the expression of the human emotions. Bell held that human anatomy uniquely allowed the expression of the human moral self while Browne argued that there were no absolute distinctions between human and animal anatomy. Charles Darwin, then a 17-year-old student at the university, was there to listen. On 27 March 1827, Browne advanced phrenological theories concerning the human mind in terms of the Lamarckist evolution of the brain. This attracted the opposition of almost all members of the Plinian Society and, again, Darwin observed the ensuing outrage.[15] In his private notebooks, including the M Notebook written ten years later, Darwin commented sympathetically on the views of the phrenologists.
George Combe published
Phrenologists from the Society applied their methods to the Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh. Over the course of ten months in 1828, Burke and Hare murdered sixteen people and sold the bodies for dissection in the private anatomy schools. Burke was executed on 28 January 1829, while Hare turned King's evidence; Burke was publicly dissected by Professor Monro the next day, and the phrenologists were permitted to examine his skull. Face masks of both men - a death-mask for Burke and a life-mask for Hare - form part of the Edinburgh phrenology collection.
Scotswoman Agnes Sillars Hamilton made a living from phrenology travelling throughout Britain and Ireland. It was her son who left for Australia and published an account of Ned Kelly's skull.[17]
Society co-founder and president Andrew Combe had two successful publications in the early 1830s: Observations on Mental Derangement in 1831 and Physiology applied to Health and Education in 1834.[18] The latter, especially, sold well in Great Britain and the United States, with numerous editions and reprintings.[18]
The Edinburgh Phrenological Society received a financial boost by the death of a wealthy supporter in 1832. William Ramsay Henderson left a large bequest to the Edinburgh Society to promote phrenology as it saw fit. The Henderson Trust enabled the society to publish an inexpensive edition of The Constitution of Man, which went on to become one of the best-selling books of the 19th century.[11][19] However, despite the widespread interest in phrenology in the 1820s and 1830s, the Phrenological Journal always struggled to make a profit.
Influences from the society
"One is tempted to believe phrenologists are right about habitual exercise of the mind altering form of head, & thus these qualities become hereditary." Charles Darwin (1838) The M Notebook.
W.A.F. Browne: In 1832–1834, Browne published a paper in The Phrenological Journal in three serialised episodes On Morbid Manifestations of the Organ of Language, as connected with Insanity, relating
Robert Chambers: Although not formally admitted to the Society, Chambers occasionally acted as George Combe's publisher and became an enthusiast for phrenological thinking. In 1844, Chambers anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, written as he recovered from depression at his holiday home in St Andrews. Chambers' wife, Anne Kirkwood, transcribed the manuscript for the publishers (dictated by her husband) so that they would not recognise its origins. In a strange parallel, Prince Albert read it aloud to Queen Victoria in the Summer of 1845. It became an international bestseller and a powerful public influence, situated midway between Combe's The Constitution of Man (1828) and Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859.
Charles Darwin: Darwin attended the University of Edinburgh Medical School and, as an active member of Plinian Society,
William Ballantyne Hodgson:
Thomas Laycock:
John Pringle Nichol: Nichol was originally educated and licensed as a preacher, but the impact of phrenological thinking pushed him into education.[21] He became a famous lecturer and Regius Professor of Astronomy in Glasgow University, and his 1837 book The Architecture of the Heavens was a classic of popular science. In the 1840s, Nichol became addicted to prescription opiates, and he recorded his successful hydropathic rehabilitation in his autobiographical correspondence Memorials from Ben Rhydding.
Hewett Cottrell Watson: In 1836,
Decline
Interest in phrenology declined in Edinburgh in the 1840s. Some of the phrenologists' concerns drifted into the related fields of
The last recorded meeting of the Society took place in 1870.[25] The Society's museum closed in 1886.[11]
Legacy of the Society
"You interest me very much, Mr Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolicocephalic a skull or such well marked supra-orbital development.... A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum..." - Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound Of The Baskervilles(1902).
Together with
On 29 February 1924, Sir James Crichton-Browne (the son of William A.F. Browne) delivered the Ramsay Henderson Bequest Lecture entitled The Story of the Brain in which he recorded a generous appreciation of the role of the Edinburgh phrenologists in the later development of neurology and neuropsychiatry. Crichton-Browne did not remark, however, on his father's having joined the Society a century earlier, almost to the day.
"While defending the fundamental principle that the brain is the organ of the mind.... the phrenologists were exposed to violent abuse, ridicule and vituperation.... it was, of course, their craniological conclusions, their dissection of the mind into a number of component faculties.... that was the main point of attack, and that, it must be allowed, readily leant itself to burlesque...." James Crichton-Browne (1924) The Story of The Brain.
The Henderson Trust was wound up in 2012.[27] Many of the society's phrenological artefacts survive today, having passed to the University of Edinburgh's Anatomical Museum[27] under the guidance of Professor Matthew Kaufman, and they are now on display at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
The activities of the Edinburgh phrenologists have enjoyed an unusual afterlife in the history and sociology of scientific knowledge (science studies), as an example of a discarded cultural production.
References
- ^ "The Rise of Phrenology in Edinburgh". www.phrenology.mvm.ed.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 2016-09-23.
- ^ "Records of the Phrenological Society of Edinburgh - Archives Hub". archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
- ^ a b "The Fall of Phrenology in Edinburgh". Anatomical Museum. School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015.
- ^ "The History of Phrenology: A Chronology". www.victorianweb.org. Retrieved 20 January 2017.
- Bibcode:2004HisSc..42..313V.
- ISBN 0-226-29261-4.
Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line.
- ^ Kaufman (2005), p. 2.
- ^ "George Combe - Encyclopedia". www.theodora.com. Retrieved 23 September 2016.
- ISBN 978-0754634089.
- ISBN 9780070450875.
- ^ a b c d e "The Rise of Phrenology in Edinburgh". Anatomical Museum. School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015.
- ^ S2CID 53203063.
- ISBN 978-0754608622.
- ^ Kaufman (2005), p. 93.
- .
- ^ Crichton-Browne, James (29 February 1924), The Story of the Brain, The Ramsay Henderson Lecture, Edinburgh
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ "Getting a head". Portrait magazine. Retrieved 28 June 2019.
- ^ a b Bettany, 1887.
- ^ Kaufman (2005).
- ^ "Phrenology", Encyclopædia Britannica (9th and 10th ed.), 1902
- ^ MacLehose, James (1886). "71. John Pringle Nichol, 1804–1859". Memoirs and Portraits of One Hundred Glasgow Men who have died during the last thirty years and in their lives did much to make the city what it now is. Vol. 2. Glasgow: James MacLehose & Sons. pp. 249–252.
- ^ McGilchrist, Iain (2009) The Master and his Emissary New Haven and London: Yale University Press, see especially pages 16 and 60. Ambitious and sweeping interpretation of western culture and civilization in terms of an asymmetric neurology of mind.
- ISBN 978-0691084657.
- ISBN 978-0521360210.
- ^ Kaufman (2005), p. 86.
- ^ Winter, Alison (1998) Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
- ^ a b "The Death Masks". Anatomical Museum. School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015.
- Kaufman, Matthew H. (2005). Edinburgh Phrenological Society: A History. Edinburgh: William Ramsay Henderson Trust. ISBN 978-0955090608.
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bettany, George Thomas (1887). "Combe, Andrew". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 11. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 425–426.
External links
- Anatomical Museum at the University of Edinburgh