ABSTRACT
Though speculation about the precise relationship of the brain to mental ability and character can be traced to antiquity, Austrian doctor Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) formulated phrenology in the modern sense in the late eighteenth century. Gall claimed that the human brain was actually a composite of twenty-seven distinct measurable organs, which accounted for all mental activity and behavior. Later phrenologists would add to this total, but most followed Gall in organizing the mental organs into two general classes: animalistic traits like the sexual instinct and self-preservation, and qualities exclusive to human beings like religious sentiment and comparative wisdom. General considerations looked to the size of the organs in this second “moral and intellectual” group, particularly in proportion to the more “animal” organs of the first group, as an index of intelligence, moral vigor, and religious devotion.
