Phrenology...

I found this head in my local 'vintage' shop....I like to collect ephemera as props for my photography, and have been looking out for one of these for ages. I don't think phrenology was either a good thing or a valid science. But it's interesting to see the sorts of things people thought were true.

Phrenology or the study of the shape of the head dates from 1790's based on the theories of Viennese physician Franz Joseph Gall 1758-1828. Dr John van Wye from the university of Singapore has written about Phrenology in detail
http://www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/overview.htm#true

He says:

"A phrenological bust in an antique shop will almost invariably bear the label "L. N. Fowler". Their movement was largely responsible for the anthropometric (head reading) craze of the latter 19th century and its well-known anthropological/racial concerns. The early phrenological movement was concerned more with providing practitioners with claims to epistemological certainty and intellectual authority than disscussing human races."