An illustration from an illustrated newsweekly
shows how the nineteenth-century popular
science of phrenology was disseminated across
the United States. Itinerant phrenologists, joining
other types of traveling salesmen and craftsmen, crisscrossed rural America
selling their services
and wares. "Yes, miss," the phrenologist is
quoted in the picture's caption,
"you've a very remarkable head, very!"
Phrenology
Phrenology
was a science of character divination, faculty psychology, theory of brain
and what the 19th-century phrenologists called "the only true science
of mind." Phrenology came from the theories of the idiosyncratic
Viennese physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828).
It was believed that by examining the shape and unevenness
of a head or skull, one could discover the development of the particular
cerebral "organs" responsible for different intellectual aptitudes
and character traits. For example, a prominent 
protuberance
in the forehead at the position attributed to the organ of Benevolence
was meant to indicate that the individual had a "well developed"
organ of Benevolence and would therefore be expected to exhibit benevolent
behaviour.
However, like so many popular sciences, Gall and the phrenologists sought
only confirmations for their hypotheses and did not apply the same standard
to contradictory evidence. Any evidence or anecdote which seemed to confirm
the science was readily and vociferously accepted as "proof"
of the "truth" of phrenology. At the same time, contradictory
findings, such as a not very benevolent and disagreeable person having
a well-developed organ of Benevolence were always explained away. This
was often done by claiming that the activity of other organs counteracted
Benevolence. What was never accepted by phrenologists, however, was that
admitting that the activity of a particular faculty could be independent
of the size of its organ undermined the most fundamental assumptions of
the science- and thereby rendered all of its conclusions inconsistent
and meaningless.