The Right Chemistry: Many believed skull shape reflected intelligence

The notion has no scientific basis, but phrenologists do deserve credit for introducing the idea that different parts of the brain have different functions.

Article content

Walk through a pharmacy today and you may encounter a device that automatically reads blood pressure. A hundred years ago, that encounter may well have been with a psychograph that analyzed your personality traits and predicted success or failure in life. After donning the metal helmet equipped with numerous rods that pivoted to match the shape of your skull, you would walk away with a printout that assessed your mental attributes on a scale of one to five and offered advice on making changes. A typical reading of three for “wit” was: “Try to get fun and mirth out of life. Smile and joke with others to improve your wit. You need to appreciate more of the ludicrous in life.” Hmmm. I think anyone putting on a psychograph was already into the ludicrous. 

Advertisement 2

Article content

This bizarre contraption was invented in 1905 by Henry Lavery, capitalizing on the public’s interest in phrenology, the brainchild of German physician Franz Joseph Gall. Introduced in the late 1700s, phrenology was based on the belief that the shape of the skull reflects a person’s mental abilities and reveals specific character traits. Gall came to this conclusion in his school days upon noting that the most intelligent student in his class had noticeably prominent eyes and a large forehead. Gall rationalized that just like muscles that increase in size with exercise, parts of the brain that are most used expand and distort the skull, producing bumps that are then amenable to analysis. Intelligence, mathematical skills, musicality and numerous characteristics such as love of children and desire to own material things could be determined by studying an individual’s skull. 

Article content

Phrenology became all the rage and even writers such as Walt Whitman, Emily Brontë, Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle bought into the craze. The creator of Sherlock Holmes embracing phrenology was particularly curious, since the detective — the very embodiment of logic — was a tireless promoter of basing theories on facts. Conan Doyle depicted both Sherlock Holmes, as well as his highly intelligent arch enemy Professor Moriarty, as having dominant foreheads. Upon finally encountering Holmes, Moriarty remarks that Holmes has less frontal development than he would have expected. Interestingly, Conan Doyle himself had a prominent forehead. The author, who hailed from Edinburgh, could well have been influenced by George and Andrew Combe, who had founded the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. The building still stands today, decorated with the busts of the Combes as well as those of Gall and his disciple Johann Spurzheim who coined the term phrenology. 

Article content

Advertisement 3

Article content

Spurzheim claimed that diagnosis of traits by examination of the shape of the cranium was important because these traits could be altered. People whose skull showed signs of weak intelligence were not doomed, he maintained. If they were identified and provided with a means of education, the appropriate part of their brain would be exercised and would increase in size, boosting their intelligence.  

Spurzheim’s lectures popularized phrenology first in Victorian England then in America, where his methods were adopted by the brothers Lorenzo and Orson Fowler who became noted phrenologists and even commercialized “Fowler heads” — busts marked with areas representing different attributes. These were widely used by phrenologists to interpret their findings as they palpated their subjects’ skull with their fingers. Companies based hiring practices on phrenological analysis, marriage partners were selected based on skull shapes, and parents were keen to learn about their children’s future prospects by putting them in the hands of a phrenologist. Lorenzo later hung out a shingle in London that led to an encounter with Mark Twain, who poked fun at Fowler by remarking the phrenologist had found on his skull a cavity where humour ought to be. Many cartoonists also had fun at the phrenologists’ expense, and to most scientists, the suggested link between bumps on the head and innate characteristics seemed absurd and worthy of being mocked. 

Advertisement 4

Article content

Science, however, is not based on “seems.” It is based on investigation and the unearthing of facts. Coming to a conclusion must be based on evidence, not on a judgment of plausibility. Somewhat surprisingly, phrenology was not put to a scientific test until 2018, when researchers at the University of Oxford used magnetic resonance images (MRI) accumulated by the U.K. Biobank imaging study to search for any possible relationship between the shape of the skull and personality traits. They were able to do this because the Biobank study also includes data from questionnaires that assess cognitive abilities as well as lifestyle measures, such as a history of the number of sexual partners. A second part of the study involved investigating whether the contours of the skull were a reflection of the characteristic folds of the brain. 

One of Gall’s claims was that the “organ of amativeness,” described as “the faculty that gives rise to the sexual feeling” was located in the brain near the nape of the neck and could be located by a protuberance on the skull. The size and shape of the bump was said to be a measure of sexual desire. How did he come to this conclusion? By probing the skulls of some “emotional” young women, two recently widowed neighbours, and his local vicar, subjects who supposedly represented the spectrum of sexual desires. The Oxford researchers found no correlation between the bumps on the skull that supposedly locate the “organ of amativeness” and the number of sexual partners as revealed by the Biobank questionnaires. Neither did they find a relationship between any other phrenological characteristics and skull topography. They then put the nail in the coffin by demonstrating that brain gyrification, the folds that appear on the surface of the brain, have no relationship to the shape of the skull. “According to our results,” the scientists remarked somewhat tongue in cheek, “a more accurate phrenological bust should be left blank since no regions on the head correlate with any of the faculties that we tested.” 

Advertisement 5

Article content

While science has now shown that phrenology has no scientific basis, phrenologists do deserve credit of sorts for introducing the idea that different parts of the brain have different functions. Today we know that speech, sight, motor function and judgment are controlled by different parts of the brain. But all of you who are now probing the back of your neck searching for the “organ of amativeness,” remember that thanks to the Oxford researchers, who admittedly conceived their study over pints at their local pub, phrenology can be confidently labelled a pseudo-science. 

Joe Schwarcz ([email protected]) is director of McGill University’s Office for Science & Society (mcgill.ca/oss). He hosts The Dr. Joe Show on CJAD Radio 800 AM every Sunday from 3 to 4 p.m.

Related Stories

Advertisement 6

Article content

Article content