Mark Twain Investigates Phrenology
"In London, 33 or 34 years ago, I made a small test of phrenology for my
better information. I went to Fowler under an assumed name and he examined
my elevations and depressions and gave me a chart which I carried home to
the Langham Hotel and studied with great interest and amusement - the same
interest and amusement which I should have found in the chart of an imposter
who had passed himself off for me and who did not resemble me in a single
sharply defined detail. I waited 3 months and went to Mr. Fowler again,
heralding my arrival with a card bearing both my name and my nom de guerre.
Again I carried away an elaborate chart. It contained several sharply
defined details of my character, but it bore no recognizable resemblance to
the earlier chart. These experiences gave me a prejudice against phrenology
which has lasted until now. I am aware that the prejudice should have been
against Fowler, instead of the art; but I am human and that is not the way
prejudices act." (Neider 1959)
"Fowler received me with indifference, fingered my head in an uninterested
way, and named and estimated my qualities in a bored and monotonous voice.
He said I possessed amazing courage, and abnormal spirit of daring, a pluck,
a stern will, a fearlessness that were without limit, I was astonished at
this, and gratified too; I had not suspected it before; but then he foraged
over on the other side of my skull and found a hump there which he called
"caution." This hump was so tall, so mountainous, that it reduced my
courage-bump to a mere hillock by comparison, although the courage bump had
been so prominent up to that time-according to his description of it-that it
ought to have been a capable thing to hang my hat on; but it amounted to
nothing, now in the presence of that Matterhorn which he called my Caution.
He explained that if that Matterhorn had been left out of my scheme of
character I would have been one of the bravest men that ever lived-possibly
the bravest-but that my cautiousness was so prodigiously superior to it that
it abolished my courage and made me almost spectacularly timid. He continued
his discoveries, with the result that I came out safe and sound, at the end,
with a hundred great and shining qualities; but which lost their value and
amounted to nothing because each of the hundred was coupled up with an
opposing defect which took the effectiveness all out of it." (Neider 1959)
Note that "Fowler" refers to Lorenzo Fowler who, along with his brother
Orson, pioneered and dominated the "science" of phrenology throughout their
long careers.
It is interesting that phrenology, unlike most alternative modalities, has
essentially died out completely. I suspect that this is because it was not
really an alternative, but was an accepted integral part of conventional
science of the time and was supplanted by better science.
Phrenology was not the only target of Twain's debunking. He also wrote some
stinging critiques of Mesmerism and Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science, and
challenged the divine origin of the Book of Mormon.
--Rich