Gall and phrenology

Born in 1758, Gall became convinced that the cerebrum is composed of different functional
regions, each associated with a different faculty of mind and he sustained that he could identify these
different organs by correlating bumps and depressions on the skull with everyday behaviors, such as
vanity, worshipping, and stealing.
The seeds of Gall's theory were planted early in his life, when he noticed that a classmate with
superior memory for verbal material had bulging eyes. He subsequently recognized that some other
students with bulging eyes were also excellent in verbal memory. In contrast, his own eyes did not
bulge, and he considered himself a poor verbal memorizer. From these casual observations, Gall
deduced that a highly developed brain area specifically devoted to verbal memory was the likely cause
of the bulging eyes. He further reasoned that if one faculty of mind could be localized, so could others.
During the 1790s, after he obtained his medical degree and settled in Vienna, Gall began to
present his new ideas to the public. The Catholic clergy and the conservative Hapsburg rulers of Austria,
however, looked upon his thinking as dangerously materialistic or soulless. By 1802, those in power had
heard enough, and a general decree requiring approval for public lectures followed (Capen, 1881; also
see Gall, 19835, Vol. 1, p.19). Knowing that it was really aimed at him, and not willing to remain silent,
Gall opted to move to France. He stopped along the way to give lectures and demonstrations in
Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, convinced that he was shedding new light on
human behavior and the organization of the nervous system, as well as revolutionizing medicine.
During his travels and once settled in Paris, Gall continued his studies, hoping to learn more
about the functions of the brain and their associated cortical structures. In particular, he examined the
crania of individuals who constituted both the positive and negative extremes of society. These men and
women included great writers, scientists, and orators, as well as lunatics, criminals, and those afflicted
with congenital disabilities. When he found a person with an exceptional talent or a person with
deficient in some ability, he examined the form of that person's head for a cranial prominence or
depression. And when he came across a person with unusual skull features, he tried to find out what
traits distinguished that individual from others. To help him with his correlations, and to build up his
reference "library", he collected hundreds of skulls, made casts of others, and sketched.
He believed that nineteen of the twenty-seven faculties he could identify in humans could also
be demonstrated in animals. Among the faculties humans supposedly share with animals are
reproductive instinct, love of one's offspring, affection. Some he classified as unique to humans are
wisdom, poetic talent, kindness, mimicry, and religious sentiment. Our highest human faculties, Gall
postulated, are housed in the frontal lobes, a part of the cerebrum not well developed in animals.
Gall never contended that he knew the anatomical boundaries of each of his identified faculties.
Nevertheless, he believed that the two hemispheres duplicated each other and that each half of the
brain could serve as a complete organ of mind. This is why he typically showed and labeled just the left
side of the brain in his publications.