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[Fowler, O. S., et. al.]

2 Private Lectures in Loomis’ Temple of Music[.] Prof. O. S. Fowler Lectures on Life, Health, Natural Law, Self-Culture, Marriage, Rearing Children, &c., &c., as Taught by Phrenology!

New Haven, Connecticut, [ca. 1870]. Illustrated broadsheet, 19.125” x 6.5”. CONDITION: Very good, toning at margins, numerous marginal tape discolorations.

An illustrated broadsheet detailing two upcoming phrenological lectures—one each for women and men, and both illustrated with “a full set of French models”—in New Haven, Connecticut, by the man who started America’s phrenological craze.

A striking phrenological head superintends this content-rich broadsheet advertising two lectures by O. S. Fowler, together covering “Life, Health, Natural Law, Self-Culture, Marriage, Rearing Children, &c., &c.” Below the head is a definition key of the forty-two numbered faculties, and a notice to prospective clients that “Professional Consultations [a]s to your own and children’s phrenology, best business, self-culture, &c., &c., &c.,” could be had “at his rooms at the New Haven House” until Monday, December 20th. The lectures, on the afternoon and evening of December 16th at Loomis’ Temple of Music (est. 1865), were to be followed by “Public Examinations of Noted Citizens, selected by the Audience,” and each covered topics of particular interest to its audience: for women, “Female Health and Beauty, Preserved and Restored” (embracing everything from female anatomy and the maintenance of female beauty to maternity, nursing, and “female ailments, their ravages”), and for men, “Sexual Science, Manhood and its Improvement” (including scientific information on “Manliness”—”Parents, save your sons by sending them to this lecture”). On the verso, promotions and testimonials on the value of Fowler’s phrenological readings fill a section titled “God Creates; Man Cultivates.” Below that, a section titled “Opinions of the Press” contains newspaper extracts from across the country, spanning from San Francisco to Boston and New Orleans to Buffalo.

First developed in the late 1790s by German physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828), phrenology gained wide acceptance as a legitimate scientific explanation of character, in part due to the efforts of Gall’s disciples Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776–1832), who brought word of phrenology to America, and George Coombe (1788–1858), who founded the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. Gall’s central notion that various character traits and emotions are each governed by specific portions of the brain has been credited as an early contribution to neuropsychology. However, his idea that the brain comprises 27 personality organs and that the skull can be read to determine the degree to which a person possesses a particular characteristic was, of course, ultimately rejected as arbitrary and lacking any genuine empirical basis.

Orson Squire Fowler (1809–1887) encountered phrenology as a student at Amherst College, and he and his brother Lorenzo Niles (1809–1887) began touring the country, lecturing and performing phrenological readings. Their American Phrenological Journal ran from 1831 until 1911, changing its name several times and eventually merging with the brothers’ other publication, Life Illustrated. They also published numerous books, almanacs, and phrenological charts, and gained enormous influence. “Everyone, from small-town folk to the rich and famous, sat for readings, including such notables as Horace Greeley…Brigham Young,” P. T. Barnum, Walt Whitman, and the young Clara Barton, as well as Mark Twain—who “recounted with horror that Fowler had found on his skull ‘a cavity’ where humor ought to be” and was accordingly skeptical of the ‘science’ (Morse). Their firm, Fowler and Wells, was established in 1844, and included their sister Charlotte Fowler Wells and her husband Samuel Roberts Wells, as well as Lorenzo’s wife Lydia Folger Fowler, a pioneering female physician and professor. It was “the most prolific disseminator of phrenological materials throughout the nineteenth century” (“Fowler and Wells”).

A remarkably detailed, illustrated broadside for two gender-specific and wide-ranging phrenological lectures by the father of American phrenology.

REFERENCES: “Fowler and Wells phrenological character readings, ephemera, and printed material,” at Philadelphia Area Archives online; “Loomis Temple of Music and Journal” at New Haven Museum online.

Item #10414

Price: $675.00

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