Stanley Finger

Paul Eling

Naturalist of the Mind, Visionary of the Brain

Franz Joseph Gall

During the 1790s in Vienna, German physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) came forth with a new doctrine dealing with mind, brain and behavior—one that could account for individual differences. He maintained that there are many independent faculties of mind, each associated with a separate part of the brain. He fine-tuned his ideas and published two sets of books presenting them after he and his assistant, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, settled in Paris in 1807. Gall's ideas had many supporters but were controversial and unsettling to others. In particular, the opposition ridiculed his belief that skull features reflect the growth of specific, underlying cortical organs, and hence correlate with personality traits (i.e., his ‘bumpology’). Gall’s fundamental ideas about the mind and organization of the brain were debated across the globe, and they also began to be exploited by unscrupulous businessmen, ‘professors’ who ‘read skulls’ for a living. But, as some historians have shown, his ideas about mind, brain and behavior led to the modern neurosciences. The chapters collected in this volume provide new insights into Gall’s thinking and what Spurzheim did, and the faddish movement called ‘phrenology’, which originated as a science of humankind but became a popular source of entertainment. All chapters were originally published in various issues of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences.

Insights and Perspectives

Gall, Spurzheim, and the Phrenological Movement

The study of language and the brain is heavily dependent on the work of the early aphasiologists, and those wanting to get acquainted with the discipline will come across frequent references to these classic authors. This collection brings together seminal publications by 19th- and 20th-century neurologists concerned with the relationship between language and the brain. In selecting texts the emphasis was on those parts that deal explicitly with the opinion of an author on language processes as revealed by aphasic phenomena. All texts are presented in English (many of them translated for the first time), and preceded by in-depth introductions by present-day specialists in the field. The book includes biographical sketches of the authors discussed, and bibliographies of their relevant publications. This volume is invaluable for professionals and students who prefer to read the originals instead of leaning on textbook summaries. Texts by: Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) [Claus Heeschen]; Paul Broca (1824-1880) [Paul Eling]; Carl Wernicke (1848-1905) [Antoine Keyser]; Henry Charlton Bastian (1837-1915) [John C. Marshall]; John Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911) [Bento P.M.Schulte]; Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) [O.R. Hommes]; Jules Dejerine (1849-1917) [W.O.Renier]; Pierre Marie (1853-1940) [Yvan Lebrun]; Arnold Pick (1851-1924) [A.D.Friederici]; Henry Head (1861-1940) [Patrick Hudson]; Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965) [Ria de Bleser]; Norman Geschwind (1926-1984) [Mary-Louise Kean].

Paul Eling

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