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