ABSTRACT
The brain was recognized by serious philosophers at the time of the American Revolution to be the home of intellectual and character functions. This led to the rise of the pseudoscience of phrenology (from the Greek language for “mind” and “knowledge”), based on a presumed relationship between surface contours and bumps on the skull with character attributes. The “science” of the relationship of skull size and shape to human intellect and abilities was created by German physician Franz Joseph Gall in 1796 and was popular worldwide until about 1840 (Greenblatt 1995). The term phrenology is traced to Benjamin Rush, patriot, physician, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and founder of American psychiatry. Rush believed in a relationship between behavior and the physical state of the brain and was the first to hospitalize a mentally ill patient. An extremely important medical event occurred at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846 when ether was given to a patient by inhalation so that a neck surgery could be performed (Barker 1993). This innovation, combined with the adoption of antiseptic techniques advocated by the English surgeon Joseph Lister (spraying the operating room with carbolic acid vapor), helped advance neurosurgery from the rare attempt to relieve a traumatic skull fracture or serious brain infection to the planned trephination of the skull to relieve symptoms of injury or to remove a tumor.
