The bumps and pits on your skull betray your character, said Austrian physician and scholar Franz Joseph Gall. At the end of the eighteenth century he drew crowds with this idea, but today he is remembered at most as a quack. With the book The Brain Collector, neuropsychologist Theo Mulder gives this forgotten scholar his well-deserved place in the history of science.
A classmate of the then nine-year-old Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) had bulging eyes and was remarkably good at remembering Bible texts. There had to be a causal connection between them, the boy thought, which gave birth to a lifelong fascination for the relationship between skull shape and personal characteristics. The idea was that every trait and every talent stems from the size of certain parts of the brain, which can be felt on the outside of the skull. Although this skull leather has long since become obsolete, Gall deserves more respect than is due to him today, as Theo Mulder makes clear in his book The Brain Collector. The traces of his ideas can still be found in neuroscience.
Time frame
Gall and his vision of the brain in the early nineteenth century are regularly discussed during the lectures of the Groningen professor Mulder. But only when an American colleague thanks him for this after a lecture, does the professor of neuropsychology realize that the flamboyant Austrian physician and scientist deserves a biography. He gets to work and dives into the archives. Mulder appears to have set himself no easy task:despite his vanity, Gall has left hardly any personal information. So the professor has to make do with everything that has been written about the scholar by others. Nevertheless, this results in a pleasantly readable book that not only paints a fascinating picture of the person Gall, but also provides a beautiful picture of the relationship between knowledge and power in Europe just after the Enlightenment.
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While science had made great strides during this “age of reason,” the Church's influence on society was still great. And that church was not particularly pleased with the practices of Gall, who organized popular evenings in which he explained his theory on the basis of his large collection of skulls. If the human soul arises from physiological processes in the brain, then the role of God is quite finished, and that was of course not possible. It did not take long before the Austrian Emperor Franz II forbade Gall to disseminate his ideas through lectures and publications.
From skull leather to phrenology
Mulder describes how Gall is not deterred by this ban and travels through Europe with his assistant Spurzheim and a carriage full of skulls to spread his message further and to be admired unabashedly by his many fans. There were scholars who pointed to gaps in Gall's story, but by now this one was so full of itself that he didn't think it worth giving a serious reply to this criticism.
Gall's skullcaps are at the origin of phrenology, the pseudoscience that only became a furor after Gall's death. His assistant Johann Spurzheim played a dubious role in this – while Gall sincerely believed in his theory, Spurzheim was more about fame and money than science. Phrenology was big business in particular in England and America :Let me feel your skull and I'll tell you your character.
Foundation of neuroscience
If this theory is now obsolete, why should we give Gall a place in the history of science? Mulder shows that Gall was the first to develop a scientific, observation-based approach to behavior. He was also an important neuroanatomist. “Gall has made a lot of nonsense,” Mulder writes, “but at the same time laid the foundations of what we now call neuroscience. His work is still present in all attempts to localize behavior in specific parts of the brain. With every brain scan, Gall sits on the edge of the machine and watches.'
If we dismiss Gall as crazy because of his cranium and phrenology, we should also do the same with René Descartes and Isaac Newton. Mulder writes, “But Descartes has not been neglected for his absurd theory of the pineal gland, nor has Newton been cast aside for his lifelong search for a secret code in the Bible and his interest in alchemy.” With this biography, Mulder gives the Austrian his well-deserved reparation as a courageous scientist, social busybody, perverse thinker, brilliant anatomist and pioneer of physiological and neuropsychology.