Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: phrenology

  • Franz Joseph Gall and phrenology

    JMS PearceHull, England, United Kingdom For many reasons the work of Gall, when stripped of its excrescences, constituted an important landmark in the history of neurology. -Macdonald Critchley4 In the times of Galen, the location of the mind and spirit was imprecisely thought to reside in the brain’s ventricles and pineal. In the second century…

  • Leeching and François-Joseph-Victor Broussais

    JMS PearceHull, England, UK The practice of bloodletting began with the Egyptians and was succeeded by the Greeks, Romans (including Galen), and healers in India. In medieval times it spread throughout Europe. The “leech craze” was so popular in the nineteenth century that it has been estimated that five to six million leeches per year…

  • Roget and his Thesaurus

    JMS PearceEast Yorks, UK There was much more to Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869)(Fig 1) than his indispensable Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (Fig 2).1 But little is remembered of his illustrious career in medicine and scientific discovery, which is surprising since in these endeavors he was highly regarded in his time.2 This may stem…

  • Medical pseudoscience

    Edwin D. Babbitt (1825–1905), a medical graduate of Knox College, Galesburg, IL, developed an interest in arcane subjects early in life, publishing a book on penmanship, then switching to medical pseudoscience. He wrote books on chromotherapy, magnetism, and phrenology, claiming that these techniques combined with massage and lifestyle changes could cure any disease and eliminate…

  • Géricault’s art of insanity

    Caitlin MeyerScotland “Now I am disoriented and confused. I try in vain to find support; nothing seems solid, everything escapes me, deceives me. Our earthly hopes and desires are only vain fancies, our successes mere mirages that we try to grasp,” scrawled Théodore Géricault in a letter to his friend Dedreux-Dorcy in 1810.1 A master…