ABSTRACT
One of the major imports of European neuroscience to the American scene in the 19th century was a concept of brain organization that moved westward from France by way of Great Britain to the so-called “New World.” Currently known as “phrenology,” it gained entry to the United States through the nation’s two centers of intelligentsia: Boston and Philadelphia. At Boston, John Collins Warren, Harvard’s famous Professor of Surgery, on his visit to Paris in 1801-1802, had learned about a new system developed by Franz Josef Gall. On his return, Warren introduced the concept in lectures at Boston and Cambridge and, in 1820, made it the subject of an annual dissertation before the Massachusetts Medical Society. In Warren’s view, phrenology led both to the development of knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system, and in some measure, determined the intellectual power possessed by individuals. In Philadelphia, early interest in phrenology was introduced by Nicholas Biddle, a prominent banker who had attended Gall’s lectures at Carlsruhe in 1806 and 1807 and, ever after, had kept a skull that Gall had personally marked for him.
