Franz Joseph Gall on God and religion: "Dieu et Cerveau, rien que Dieu et cerveau!"

Franz Joseph Gall's (1758-1828) doctrine of many faculties of mind with corresponding cortical organs led him to be accused of materialism, fatalism, and even atheism. Yet little has been written about the specific charges he felt forced to respond to in Vienna, while visiting the German States, or in Paris, where he published his books. This article examines these accusations and Gall's responses. It also looks at what Gall wrote about a cortical faculty for God and religion and seeing intelligent design in the functional organization of the brain. Additionally, it presents what can be gleaned about his private thoughts on God and organized religion. We conclude that Gall was sincere in his admiration for and belief in God the Creator, but that as an enlightened scientist was recognizing the need to separate metaphysics from the laws of nature when presenting his new science of man.

Franz Joseph Gall's non-cortical faculties and their organs.

Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) is remembered for his claims that behavior results from a large number of independent mental faculties, and that these faculties are associated with cortical organs. Apart from the 26 faculties he localized in the cerebrum, he also recognized one faculty (reproductive drive) in the cerebellum. This picture, however, is based on Gall's presentations in his well-known later works, his four volume Anatomie et Physiologie. These books reflect the outcomes of Gall's thinking. They were steered by the observations and feedback he received in Vienna and while presenting his theories in the German states and neighboring countries between 1805 and 1807. Examining his lists before what he published in Paris shows how his faculties were changing. Notably, and as shown here, he had previously included several faculties associated with brainstem structures, in addition to the cerebellum, which he would continue to associate with some reproductive behaviors.

Mark Twain's life-long fascination with phrenology.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain; 1835-1910), American humorist and writer, followed scientific and medical developments, and relished exposing questionable practices and ideas. In his youth, he pondered how phrenologists were assessing character, and in 1855 he copied sections of a phrenology book and a skull diagram into a notebook. Later, in London, he had two phrenological examinations by Lorenzo Fowler-one without and the other after identifying himself. Following his "test," which produced contrasting results, he began to ridicule phrenologists and phrenology in Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and other works. He underwent at least two more head readings in the United States, and in Eddypus, an unfinished work from 1901 to 1902, he maintained that phrenologists base their insights primarily on how people dress and answer questions. Although now lampooning the craniological tenets of phrenology, Twain never seemed to reject the idea of distinct faculties of mind associated with specialized brain organs.

'Il Sonnambulo' by Michele Carafa: A Forgotten Romantic Opera with Sleepwalking.

Romantic operas provide a useful tool for historians to understand the perception of some medical disorders that existed during the nineteenth century. Somnambulism was still a mysterious condition during this time, since its pathogenesis was unknown. Hence, it comes as no surprise that somnambulism features in a number of operas, the best known of which are Verdi's 'Macbeth' and Bellini's 'La Sonnambula', both the subject of recent scholarship. Here we examine a more obscure opera in which sleepwalking is depicted. Dating from 1824, 'Il Sonnambulo' by the Italian composer Michele Carafa is based on a libretto by Felice Romani. Although it shares some features with the Verdi and Bellini operas, it also presents original elements. Our analysis of this forgotten opera supports the contention that studying operas can shed light on medical theories and practices, and on how ideas about mind and body disorders were transmitted to the laity in times past.

Edvard Munch's crisis in 1908 and French medicine: His doctors, treatments, and sources of information.

In 1908, Norwegian artist Edvard Munch-already famous for The Scream and other paintings showing sickness, despair, and suffering-put himself under the care of Dr. Daniel Jacobson, a nerve doctor in Copenhagen. Jacobson had previously attended some of Jean-Martin Charcot's lectures in Paris, as had Knud Pontoppidan, his mentor. Munch, in turn, had long been showing signs and symptoms of an anxiety disorder and what might have been viewed as neurasthenia or hysteria. Now, he also seemed to be suffering from acute alcoholic toxicity. In this article, we explore Scandinavian psychiatry at the turn of the century; Jacobson and Pontoppidan's connections to Paris; and how some of Munch's treatments, most notably his electrotherapy sessions, related to therapeutics at La Salpêtrière. Additionally, various ways in which Munch learned about French medicine are examined. This material reveals how well-known and influential Charcot and his ideas about disorders of the brain and mind had become at the turn of the century, affecting not just the French physicians but also a world-famous artist and his nerve doctor in Scandinavia.

The electrified artist: Edvard Munch's demons, treatments, and sketch of an electrotherapy session (1908-1909).

In 1908-1909, Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944), best remembered for The Scream (1893), spent eight months under Daniel Jacobson's care in a private nerve clinic in Copenhagen. Munch was suffering from alcohol abuse, and his signs and symptoms included auditory hallucinations, persecutory delusions, paresthesias, paralyses, violent mood swings, depression, loss of control, fatigue, and the loss of his basic ability to take care of himself. He was treated with rest, a fortifying diet, massages, baths, fresh air, limited exercise, and nonconvulsive electrotherapy. After he had settled in, Jacobson allowed Munch to draw, paint, and engage in photography. Munch responded with a portrait of Jacobson and a small but intriguing sketch of himself at one of his electrotherapy sessions. In this article, we examine the circumstances that brought Munch to Jacobson's clinic and his therapies, with particular attention to electrotherapies. In so doing, we hope to provide a more complete picture of Munch's crisis in 1908, his nerve doctor, the rationales for medical electricity and other treatments he endured, and Scandinavian psychiatry at this moment in time.

The lady and the eel: how Aphra Behn introduced Europeans to the "numb eel".

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) has been called the first professional British female writer. Behn probably visited Surinam in the 1660s, but it was not until 1688 that she wrote Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave, the novel for which she is best remembered. Although overlooked by historians of science, Oroonoko provided a description of the "numb eel," effectively introducing many Europeans to the exotic and frightening creature that would become known as the "electric eel" during the second half of the 1700s, when it would play a central role in showing the reality of animal electricity, effectively putting neuromuscular physiology on its more modern course. This article examines Behn's early life, including why she might have gone to Surinam, the sources that might have helped her write her colorful description of the eel, and how what she had written circulated widely and continued to contribute to the changing scientific landscape after her death.

Phrenology's frontal sinus problem: An insurmountable obstruction?

Whereas some of Gall's critics were quick to assail his organology as materialistic and fatalistic, others questioned his methods and scientific assumptions, especially his craniological tenets. The idea that the skull does not faithfully reflect the features of small, underlying brain areas was repeatedly brought up in the scientific debates. Critics pointed to the frontal sinuses above the eye orbits as evidence for the interior and exterior plates of the cranium not being in parallel-hence, for several or many phrenological organs being unknowable. This article traces the origins of the frontal sinus arguments and how Gall, Spurzheim, and later phrenologists responded to it. It reveals how the two sides fought and remained divided about the significance of the sinuses throughout the nineteenth century-that is, on whether the frontal sinus "problem" was an insurmountable obstacle or one that was merely an inconvenience.

The quest for objectivity and measurements in phrenology's "bumpy" history.

Phrenology is based on correlating character traits with visible or palpable cranial bumps (or depressions) thought to reflect underlying brain areas differing in size and levels of activity. Franz Joseph Gall, who introduced the doctrine during the 1790s, relied heavily on seeing and feeling skulls when he formulated his theory, as did Johann Spurzheim, who served as his assistant until 1813 and then set forth on his own. But Peter Mark Roget, a British critic of the doctrine, first assailed these methods as too subjective in 1818, and never changed his mind. George Combe, a Scotsman who admired Spurzheim, introduced calipers and other measuring instruments during the 1820s, hoping to make phrenology more like the admired physical sciences. In the United States, the Fowlers also called for more numbers, including measuring distances between the cortical sites above the organs of mind. Nonetheless, phrenologists realized they faced formidable barriers when it came to measuring the physical organs of mind, as opposed to basic skull dimensions. This essay examines the subjectivity that left phrenology open to criticism and shows how some phrenologists tried to overcome it. It also shows how vision and touch remained features of phrenological examinations throughout the numbers-obsessed 19th century. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Franz Joseph Gall on the "deaf and dumb" and the complexities of mind.

Franz Joseph Gall used a broad variety of phenomena in support of his organology. Well known are his observations on anatomical features of the brain, species-specific behavioral patterns, the observation that some individuals may excel in one faculty while being mediocre in others, changes in the organs with development and aging, and how the organs associated with the faculties might be affected by diseases and acute brain lesions. We here present a widely overlooked source: his observations on individuals then classified as "deaf and dumb." We discuss how these observations were presented by Gall in support of his organology and in his disputes with empiricists and sensationalists about the nature of mind.

Stephanus Bisius (1724-1790) on mania and melancholy, and the disorder called plica polonica.

Stephanus Bisius (1724-1790) was a physician of Italian descent and a graduate of the University of Pavia. He was invited to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the early 1760s and became head of the Faculty of Medicine at Vilnius University in 1781. In 1772, Bisius had authored the first original study on nervous and mental diseases in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In his 35-page booklet, written in Latin and Polish, Bisius characterized mania and melancholy as diseases of the brain, explaining that the organs that feed the human soul are affected, not the soul itself. He introduced the principles of humoralism and solidism to readers, and recognized that autopsies had failed to reveal reliable findings concerning mania or melancholy. Bisius also described the origins of the challenging disorder called plica polonica, a strange condition associated with tufts of matted hair. As a physician during the medical Enlightenment, Bisius criticized metaphysical speculations in medicine and stated that plica was only a result of superstitions. Even though he proposed antiphlogistic treatments for patients with mania and melancholy, he maintained that time and faith in God might help some patients overcome their infirmities.

Dr. Alexander Garden, a Linnaean in colonial America, and the saga of five "electric eels".

Alexander Garden (1730-1791) was born in Scotland, where he trained in medicine before settling in South Carolina in 1752. With a passion for collecting and a love of nature, he sent specimens to Linnaeus and his associates in Europe. In 1774, Garden observed and conducted electrical experiments on some "eels" that had survived the trip from Surinam to Charleston. His detailed observations and reasons for believing they emit electricity were read before the Royal Society of London and subsequently published. He also advised the sea captain who owned the eels on how to preserve them and where to deliver their bodies if they died en route to London. Although they did die en route, John Hunter of the Royal Society was able to provide excellent descriptions of their electric organs because they were so well preserved. The sequence of events that followed led to other live eels surviving the voyage to London, where they were observed to spark in darkness in 1776. This was a critical piece of evidence in favor of fish electricity and eventually for the more revolutionary idea that even human nerves and muscles might function electrically.

Mark Twain's phrenological experiment: Three renditions of his "small test".

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), the American humorist and author better known as Mark Twain, was skeptical about clairvoyance, supernatural entities, palm reading, and certain medical fads, including phrenology. During the early 1870s, he set forth to test phrenology-and, more specifically, its reliance on craniology-by undergoing two head examinations with Lorenzo Fowler, an American phrenologist with an institute in London. Twain hid his identity during his first visit, but not when he returned as a new customer three months later, only to receive a very different report about his humor, courage, and so on. He described his experiences in a short letter written in 1906 to a correspondent in London, in humorous detail in a chapter that appeared in a posthumous edition of his autobiography, and in The Secret History of Eddypus, the World Empire, a work of fiction involving time travel, which he began to write around 1901 but never completed. All three versions of Twain's phrenological ploy are presented here with commentary to put his descriptions in perspective.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes on phrenology: Debunking a fad.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) was a Boston physician, a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School, and a writer of prose and poetry for general audiences. He was also one of the most famous American wits of the nineteenth century and a celebrity not bashful about exposing costly, absurd, and potentially harmful medical fads. One of his targets was phrenology, and the current article examines how he learned about phrenology during the 1830s as a medical student in Boston and Paris, and his head-reading with Lorenzo Fowler in 1858. It then turns to what he told readers of the Atlantic Monthly (in 1859) and Harvard medical students (in 1861) about phrenology being a pseudoscience and how phrenologists were duping clients. By looking at what Holmes was stating about cranioscopy and practitioners of phrenology in both humorous and more serious ways, historians can more fully appreciate the "bumpy" trajectory of one of the most significant medical and scientific fads of the nineteenth century.

Gall's German enemies.

Franz Joseph Gall's (1758-1828) proposal for a new theory about how to represent the mental faculties is well known. He replaced the traditional perception-judgement-memory triad of abstract faculties with a set of 27 highly specific faculties, many of which humans share with animals. In addition, he argued that these faculties are dependent on specific cortical areas, these being his organs of mind. After several years of presenting his new views in Vienna, he was banned from lecturing for what he considered absurd reasons. The edict enticed him to make a scientific journey through the German states, both to present his ideas to targeted audiences and to collect more cases. This trip, started in 1805, was extended to include stops in Denmark, Holland, and Switzerland before finally ending in Paris in 1807. For the most part, Gall was received with great enthusiasm in what is now Germany, but there were some individuals who strongly opposed his anatomical discoveries and skull-based doctrine. In this article, we examine the concerns and arguments raised by Johann Gotlieb Walter in Berlin, Henrik Steffens in Halle, Jakob Fidelis Ackermann in Heidelberg, and Samuel Thomas Soemmerring in Munich, as well as how Gall responded to them.

Franz Joseph Gall on hemispheric symmetries.

Franz Joseph Gall believed that the two cerebral hemispheres are anatomically and functionally similar, so much so that one could substitute for the other following unilateral injuries. He presented this belief during the 1790s in his early public lectures in Vienna, when traveling through Europe between 1805 and 1807, and in the two sets of books he published after settling in France. Gall seemed to derive his ideas about laterality independently of French anatomist Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771-1802), who formulated his "law of symmetry" at about the same time. He would, however, later cite Bichat, whose ideas about mental derangement were different from his own and who also attempted to explain handedness, a subject on which Gall remained silent. The concept of cerebral symmetry would be displaced by mounting clinical evidence for the hemispheres being functionally different, but neither Gall nor Bichat would live to witness the advent of the concept of cerebral dominance.

Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776-1827) on Gall's craniognomic system, zoology, and comparative anatomy.

Most of what was known about Franz Joseph Gall's (1758-1828) organology or Schädellehre prior to the 1820s came from secondary sources, including letters from correspondents, promotional materials, brief newspaper articles about his lecture-demonstrations, and editions and translations of some lengthier works of varying quality in German. Physician Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776-1827) practiced in Vienna's General Hospital in 1797-1798; attended some of Gall's public lectures; and, in 1801-1802, became one of the first physicians to provide detailed reports on Gall's emerging organology in French and English, respectively. Although Bojanus considered the human mind to be indivisible and did not entirely agree with Gall's assumption that the brain consists of a number of independent organs responsible for various faculties, he provided valuable information and thoughtful commentary on Gall's views. Furthermore, he defended Gall against the charge that his sort of thinking would lead to materialism and cautiously predicted that the new system would be fruitful for developing and stimulating important new research about the brain and mind. Bojanus became a professor of zoology in 1806 and a professor of comparative anatomy in 1814 at Vilnius University, where, among other accomplishments, he established himself as a founder of modern veterinary medicine and a pioneer of pre-Darwinian and pre-Lamarckian evolutionism.

An early description of Crouzon syndrome in a manuscript written in 1828 by Franz Joseph Gall.

Just a few weeks before his death in 1828, Franz Joseph Gall, the father of what others would later call phrenology, wrote a letter to an unknown person, presumably a fellow physician. The manuscript describes the case of girl, 19 months of age. The girl's skull showed marked deformations consistent with what would be called craniosynostosis or Crouzon('s) syndrome by physicians today. Gall related some clinical features of her case and suggested some treatment options. This case report is particularly interesting because it is almost 200 years old, predates Crouzon's description of the syndrome by 84 years, and shows that Gall was still involved with treating patients, even in his final year.

Franz Joseph Gall on the Cerebellum as the Organ for the Reproductive Drive.

Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) is best remembered for his belief that bumps on the skull reflect the growth of small, underlying brain areas, though among some historians, more positively for introducing the concept of cortical localization of function. All but one of Gall's 27 settled-upon cortical faculties involved the cerebral cortex, the exception being his most primitive faculty, reproductive instinct, which he associated with the cerebellar cortex. This article examines Gall's earlier subcortical organs, with an emphasis on why he associated the cerebellum with this drive. It draws from accounts by several physicians, who attended his Vienna lectures or heard him speak in Germany and the Netherlands in 1805-1806 [i.e., before he published his finalized list in his Anatomie et Physiologie (1810-1819)]. These early accounts show that early on he localized at least four faculties in brainstem structures, including a reproductive drive in the cerebellar cortex. He based his structure-function association primarily on cranial differences between men and women, and what he found in males and females of other species, although cranioscopy was not his sole method. It is also shown that, in opposition to his cerebellar-reproductive drive association, Marie Jean Pierre Flourens linked coordinated skeletal movements to the cerebellum after conducting lesion experiments, mainly on birds. Flourens did not design his experiments to challenge Gall's ideas on localization of function, but they did just that. Gall responded that ablation methods lack precision and lead to misguided conclusions. How Gall continued to associate the reproductive instinct with the cerebellar cortex, even after deleting his other brainstem-based associations from his faculties of mind, tells us much about him and the faith he had in his methods and doctrine.

The reception of Gall's organology in early-nineteenth-century Vilnius.

Much has been written about the development and reception of Franz Joseph Gall's (1758-1828) ideas in Western Europe. There has been little coverage, however, of how his Schädellehre or organology was received in Eastern Europe. With this in mind, we examined the transmission and acceptance/rejection of Gall's doctrine in Vilnius (now Lithuania). We shall focus on what two prominent professors at Vilnius University felt about organology. The first of these men was Andrew Sniadecki (1768-1838), who published an article on Gall's system in the journal Dziennik Wilenski in 1805. The second is his contemporary, Joseph Frank (1771-1842), who wrote about the doctrine in his memoirs and published an article on phrenology in the journal Bibliotheca Italiana in 1839. Both Frank and Sniadecki had previously worked in Vienna's hospitals, where they became acquainted with Gall and his system, but they formed different opinions. Sniadecki explained the doctrine not only to students and doctors but also to the general public in Vilnius, believing the new science had merit. Frank, in contrast, attempted to prove the futility of cranioscopy. Briefer mention will be made of the assessments of Johann Peter Frank (1745-1821) and Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776-1827), two other physicians who overlapped Gall in Vienna and went to Vilnius afterward. Additionally, we shall bring up how a rich collection of human skulls was used for teaching purposes at Vilnius University, and how students were encouraged to mark the organs on crania using Gall's system. Though organology in Vilnius, as in many other places, was always controversial, it was taught at the university, accepted by many medical professionals, and discussed by an inquisitive public.