Johann Gaspar Spurzheim: The St. Paul of phrenology

ABSTRACT

Franz Joseph Gall’s wayward discipline Johann Gaspar Spurzheim greatly modified Gall’s original system and introduced it to the English-speaking world. Through an active program of itinerant lecturing, publishing and converting disciplines, Spurzheim made phrenology. He also developed a philosophy of following the laws of nature that was adopted and further promoted by his disciple, George Combe. Combe’s book The Constitution of Man (1828) became one of the best-selling works of its genre in the nineteenth century. Thus Spurzheim, never particularly original, exercised an enormous influence on nineteenth-century culture.