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376 Chapter 13 | Antebellum Idealism and Reform Impulses, 1820–1860
as an early type of science, related to what would become psychology and devoted to understanding how the mind worked. Phrenologists believed that the mind contained thirty-seven “faculties,” the strengths or weaknesses of which could be determined by a close examination of the size and shape of the cranium (Figure 13.14).
Figure 13.14 This March 1848 cover of the American Phrenological Journal illustrates the different faculties of the mind as envisioned by phrenologists.
Initially developed in Europe by Franz Joseph Gall, a German doctor, phrenology first came to the United States in the 1820s. In the 1830s and 1840s, it grew in popularity as lecturers crisscrossed the republic. It was sometimes used as an educational test, and like temperance, it also became a form of popular entertainment.
Click and Explore
Map the brain! Check out all thirty-seven of phrenology’s purported faculties (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/15Phrenology) of the mind.
The popularity of phrenology offers us some insight into the emotional world of the antebellum United States. Its popularity speaks to the desire of those living in a rapidly changing society, where older ties to community and family were being challenged, to understand one another. It appeared to offer a way to quickly recognize an otherwise-unknown individual as a readily understood set of human faculties.
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