From Craniology Burlesqued, in three serio-comic lectures, humbly dedicated to the patronage of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, by a Friend to Common Sense.
The frontispiece from the book is included.
Published by Effingham Wilson in 1818. Second Edition.
Size: Both 22.5 x 13 cms.
The plates mock phrenology, a pseudo science that involved measuring bumps on the skull to predict mental traits. Phrenology was based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind and that certain brain areas have localised, specific functions. Whilst both these ideas have a basis in reality phrenology extrapolates beyond empirical knowledge in a way that departs from science. The idea was developed by a German physician Franz Joseph Gall in 1796. It was influential in the 19th Century from around 1810 to 1840 but widely mocked even at the time.
In one of the prints we see the different areas of the skull numbered. In the second the character traits associated with the locality and shape of bumps on the skull are quite grotesquely illustrated.
