Marketplace of the Marvelous (12 page)

As with many other irregulars, phrenology wasn't the Fowlers' only interest, and their office became a meeting place for all kinds of reformers. This wasn't surprising, as the idea of perfectibility that imbued phrenology could also be found in the rhetoric of other popular social reform movements. The Fowlers championed vegetarianism, mesmerism, temperance, and even architectural reform. Of architecture, Orson Fowler believed that octagonal houses, in particular, were more healthful because the eight walls formed wider angles than the typical ninety degrees, allowing for the freer circulation of fresh air. The cost and space efficiency of the design also made the houses accessible to the rich and poor alike. Lydia Fowler and her sister-in-law Charlotte also campaigned for women's rights out of their offices, seeing phrenology as scientific evidence of women's equal mental capacity and thus their ability to work, vote, and certainly lead. “Reform,
Reform
,
REFORM
, is emphatically the watchword of the age,” declared Orson Fowler.
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In the early 1840s, the Fowlers attacked the inadequacies of the American educational system, particularly condemning the lack of rights afforded to children. Of course, one of the rights that the Fowlers believed all children should be entitled to was that of having a phrenologically based education on the model first proposed by Combe. It must have thrilled them to read that noted school reformer Horace Mann proclaimed himself “more indebted to Phrenology than to all the metaphysical works I ever read.”
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Mann had been greatly influenced by Combe's theories. He adopted
The Constitution of Man
as a text for the normal schools of Massachusetts, and even named his son George Combe Mann for his phrenological hero. The Fowlers only hoped that other educators would prove so enlightened.
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Although they became the most well known, the Fowlers weren't the only ones selling and promoting phrenology in the United States. By the late 1830s, itinerant phrenologists crisscrossed the country giving head exams and handing out periodicals and other information. More than twenty thousand traveling phrenologists plied their trade throughout the nineteenth century, many using it as a first step out of their childhood home and into adulthood. Reading heads gave young men a way to get off the farm and make a good living before settling down and marrying.
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There was probably not a community in the nation that did not entertain at least one visit from an itinerant phrenologist.
These traveling phrenologists also benefited from the demonstrative nature of examining heads. Americans did not just want to read about scientific advances, but to engage with science directly. Phrenology offered that chance and made Americans head-conscious in a way they had never been before.

Phrenologists often took head readings using a device called a craniometer. Gall had invented the device based on his knowledge of the anatomy of the brain. He believed that the ridges of the brain gathered behind the ears and radiated outward, so he created a tool that rested in the ears like the points of a compass. Rotating the device over the skull, a phrenologist could measure the size of each organ using the phrenological chart as a starting place.
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Do-it-yourself guides offered instruction and tips for finding each organ. Draw a line from “the outer angle of the eye, to the top of the ears, and extend it straight backward an inch and a half to an inch and three quarters, and you are on Combativeness,” counseled
The Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology
. “This organ starts about midway to the back part of the ears, and runs upward and backward toward the crown of the head. To ascertain its relative size, steady the head with one hand, say the left, and place the balls of your right fingers upon the point just specified letting your elbow be somewhat below the subject's head, which will bring your fingers directly across the organ.” Once in the right position, the phrenologist felt for the fullness and sharpness of the organ.
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Skilled phrenologists—as well as those out to make a quick buck—could complete readings in about thirty minutes.

Head readings tended to be flattering, or at least so vague as to not be insulting, since bad feelings could hurt repeat business. Readings tended to shore up prevailing attitudes and reflected contemporary beliefs about the appropriate roles of men and women. Women's skulls usually exhibited strong parental feelings and large organs of “Benevolence” and “Inhabitiveness,” just the areas needed to keep women at home with the kids.
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As William James noted in his
Principles of Psychology
in the late nineteenth century, “Phrenology hardly does more than restate the problem. . . . To answer the question, ‘Why do I like children?' by saying, ‘Because you have a large organ of philoprogenitiveness,' but renames the phenomenon to be explained.”
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Nevertheless, confirmation was what many people wanted, and it brought crowds of supporters to the phrenologist's doors.

Many of these itinerant phrenologists were eminently practical, recognizing the value of providing actionable, concrete advice. This kind of counsel was in great demand as America became a nation of increasing geographic and social mobility. It was also quite a different tack than that taken by Spurzheim and Combe, who were far more theoretically oriented and had little to offer people looking for tangible answers to life's basic questions. Practical phrenologists, on the other hand, functioned more like psychics, determining career aptitudes or marriage prospects with declarative prognostication. Unlike psychics, though, phrenologists appeared to have science on their side, a considerable attraction in post-Enlightenment nineteenth-century America.
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The Fowlers, too, were highly practical in their phrenology, offering what they called vocational guidance and employment counseling. They were so successful at it that some employers required job applicants to bring a recommendation of their abilities from the Fowlers. For those in search of a calling, the Fowlers had a list of “developments” that would lead to success in particular careers, almost like a career aptitude test, but one that measured your head rather than your demonstrable skills. Lawyers, for instance, required a large area of “Eventuality” to recall cases, while the perceptive faculties should dominate the medical profession. The mechanic needed a sizable zone of “Constructiveness.” For those wanting to follow in the Fowlers' footsteps, a good phrenologist needed a “first-rate head” marked by good perception, an excellent memory, strong “Comparison and Human Nature,” “Constructiveness,” and “Ideality.”
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Once people knew what line of work they wished to pursue, they needed only to cultivate the faculties necessary for success in that particular calling.

Phrenology could work against employment as well. In 1867, the
New York Times
reported that a Montreal postmaster had fired several employees after a phrenologist found them deficient in skills he deemed essential to the job. “The moral and intellectual bumps were found deficient, so much so that it was impossible to retain those gentleman any longer as public servants,” claimed the phrenologically devoted postmaster.
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Heads did not lie. Unless, of course, they did. A decade earlier,
Godey's Lady's Book
, the most popular and highest-circulation women's magazine of the nineteenth century, proclaimed that women had an advantage over men in potentially deceiving the
phrenologist. All they had to do was adjust their hair. “Upon most of the betraying prominences, complete disguise may be put, and those which are creditable and beautiful may be greatly thrown into relief, heightened and made to tell upon expression. An inch forward or backward in the placing the knot of the hair, gives the head (the most common observer sees, without knowing why) a very different character,” stated the author. A woman could “make her head show, phrenologically, for pretty much what she pleases.”
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Work wasn't the only area for which the Fowlers offered advice: they also counseled on love. The Fowlers declared that love, like all areas of life, was governed by exact scientific rules; you needed only to consult a phrenologist to learn how to apply them. Using guidelines dictated by temperament and phrenological development, the Fowlers created charts that would help clients choose “congenial companions for life.” Generally, their advice was straightforward and not unlike that found in modern advice columns. Persons of the same temperament, especially if on the extreme end of that temperament, should not be married. The same held true for those of opposite temperaments. Instead, people should aim to find mates with compatible and complementary traits. “Suppose your very large Benevolence fastens upon
doing good
as your highest duty,” wrote Orson Fowler, “how can your feelings in other respects harmonize with a selfish companion, whose god is gain, and who turns coldly from suffering humanity, refusing to bestow charity, and contending with you for casting in your mite.” Some of their advice was less predictable, though. Those with “bright red hair should marry jet black” and the curly haired should never marry another with curly hair, the style and coloring of hair presumably indicating character traits that would clash.
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Godey's Lady's Book
declared phrenology would do away “with all doubt and misgiving” in love as potential mates could now “woo by the book.”
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Countless public figures had their heads examined by the Fowlers, whether out of curiosity, hope, or belief, and the results were often published in the Fowlers'
American Phrenological Journal
. Showman P. T. Barnum, abolitionist John Brown, newspaperman Horace Greeley, future president James Garfield, and poet Walt Whitman all offered their heads for examination. Statesman Daniel Webster received the flattering report that his skull was to ordinary heads “what the great dome of St. Peter's is to the small cupolas at its side.”
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Women's rights
advocate Susan B. Anthony was, at first, rather obliquely described as “an original character” but the reading went on to praise her: “those who look for a passive and submissive spirit will not find it here; but they will find a brave, resolute, vigorous, and willing worker.” Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, was said to have picked her career based on a reading by Lorenzo Fowler. He examined her head in the mid-1830s and advised her mother to “throw responsibility” upon the then-fifteen-year-old Barton, for she had the mind of a great teacher.
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Lorenzo also read the head of the then-unknown Allan Pinkerton and declared he “would make a capital detective; he would smell a rogue three miles [away].” Pinkerton later went on to found the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which became one of the most famous agencies of its kind, in part for foiling an assassination attempt against President Lincoln in 1861.
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Legend has it that President Ulysses S. Grant also chose his military career based on a head reading.
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Phrenological ideas traveled far and wide and through every profession in the United States, including politics. After an 1842 visit to Washington, DC, writer Charles Dickens reported that he was asked his impression of the nation's political heads. They didn't mean “their chiefs and leaders,” wrote Dickens in wonderment, “but literally their individual and personal heads, whereon their hair grew, and whereby the phrenological character of each legislator was expressed.”
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Phrenology offered politicians a powerful means to affirm the quality of their character or, in other instances, to redeem reputations gone awry. After Vice President Andrew Johnson gave a drunken speech to the Senate at President Lincoln's inauguration in March of 1865 (suffering from typhoid fever, Johnson consumed several glasses of whiskey to give him strength before the event), Johnson had been dogged by accusations that he was a drunkard and unfit for political office. In 1866, the
New York Times
published a profile of Johnson that included his phrenology. He's “a man of warm impulses, indomitable will and courage, upright and philosophical, patriotic,” and most important of all, “strictly temperate.” The writer concluded that the rumors of Johnson's drinking habits could not possibly be true based on his healthy appearance and upstanding head bumps.
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Writers seized on phrenology as a creative decoder for revealing knowledge about themselves and their characters. Phrenology as psychology
was taken seriously and permeated the literature and novels of the day. Louisa May Alcott, William Cullen Bryant, Stephen Crane, William Dean Howells, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell were among the many writers to submit to phrenological exams to understand themselves better. Other writers incorporated phrenology into their stories. Edgar Allan Poe used phrenology as a tool to analyze human nature in short stories such as “The Imp of the Perverse,” “The Business Man,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” In a short story titled “A.D. 3000,” by an unnamed author in
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
, a Rip Van Winkle-esque man awakes to find himself in a future where a State Phrenological Commission examines the heads of fifteen-month-old babies to determine their future vocation. On leaving the room, “each infant has a ticket pasted on its person, bearing the name of the trade or profession to which it is destined.”
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Even the white whale in
Moby Dick
cannot escape having his head read, or, more accurately, his spine, since his brain is too small to be “adequately charted.” A thorough reading of the facial bumps and vertebrae of the whale leads Ishmael to aptly conclude that the whale has an unusually large “organ of firmness or indomitableness.” Melville also compares Queequeg's head favorably with that of George Washington, though Queequeg “was George Washington cannibalistically developed.”
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Phrenology also made frequent appearances both serious and satirical in the Editor's Drawer column of
Harper's
.