Lexic.us

Definition of Phrenology

1. Noun. A now abandoned study of the shape of skull as indicative of the strengths of different faculties.

Definition of Phrenology

1. n. The science of the special functions of the several parts of the brain, or of the supposed connection between the various faculties of the mind and particular organs in the brain.

Definition of Phrenology

1. Noun. (medicine biology) The science, now generally discredited, which studies the relationships between a person's character and the morphology (structure) of the skull. ¹

¹ Source: wiktionary.com

Definition of Phrenology

1. [n -GIES]

Medical Definition of Phrenology

1. 1. The science of the special functions of the several parts of the brain, or of the supposed connection between the various faculties of the mind and particular organs in the brain. 2. In popular usage, the physiological hypothesis of Gall, that the mental faculties, and traits of character, are shown on the surface of the head or skull; craniology. Gall marked out on his model of the head the places of twenty-six organs, as round inclosures with vacant interspaces. Spurzheim and Combe divided the whole scalp into oblong and conterminous patches. Origin: Gr, the mind: cf. F. Phrenologie. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998)

Lexicographical Neighbors of Phrenology

Literary usage of Phrenology

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1. The Lancet (1842)
"The portion of his paper on the " Opinions of some Physiologists on phrenology," to which I refer, ia hie assertion that the "highest authorities in ..."

2. The Quarterly Review by William Gifford, John Taylor Coleridge, John Gibson Lockhart, Whitwell Elwin, William Macpherson, William Smith, John Murray, Rowland Edmund Prothero Ernle, George Walter Prothero (1836)
"We wish, in the first place, to point attention to the following glaring contradiction, if not in the system of phrenology, at least in the language of its ..."

3. The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health (1841)
"Testimony in favor of phrenology.—Dr. SG Howe, Superintendent of the Massachusetts Asylum lor the Blind, has, for many years, been an able and decided ..."

4. The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General by Thomas Spencer Baynes (1888)
"Th; application of phrenology to the art of painting and sculpture has been ... phrenology, or the Doctrine of thi Mind (1825), and The Anatomy of the Human ..."

5. The Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review by Isaac Smith Homans, William Buck Dana (1842)
"Uncle Sum'« Recommendation of phrenology to his millions of friends in (Ac United States. In a series of not very dull letters. ..."

6. The Biographical History of Philosophy: From Its Origin in Greece Down to by George Henry Lewes (1893)
"phrenology AS A SCIENCE. To defend their Art, phrenologists are compelled to recur tc their Doctrine, founded on the physiology of the nervous system, ..."

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