![]() Later, Swiss philosopher Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) upped the ante by linking personal disposition to physiognomy. Where did this philosophy come from? Gall's unvalidated theory was preceded by a number of so-called physiognomists dating back to Roman times, who often compared men's facial features to those of beasts. He considered the cerebellum the organ of carnality and related the colliculi to food preferences. He distinguished several faculties that humans share with animals, such as instinct of self defense and love of offspring other faculties, such as talent for poetry, benevolence, moral sense, religion, but also criminality, were unique to humans. He listed 27 personality traits referring to specific brain areas ( figure). Such hypertrophy or atrophy pushed the skull out or caused it to dent or not develop, creating a moon-like surface. Gall proposed that innate behavior and aptitude-in itself a highly controversial topic-were related to large (overactive) or small (less active or absent) brain regions. He saw the brain as an assembly of numerous organs (the so-called theory of organology) and may have been one of the first to conceive of localisable functions in the cortex. Gall published his four-volume work Anatomie et physiologie du système nerveux en général et du cerveau en particulier, notable for accurate cortical convolutions and novel dissections, between 18. Gall and his pupil, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, contributed to a number of advances in the knowledge of nerve tracts, cranial nerve nuclei, the course and decussation of the pyramidal tract, and the significance of the commissures. The authors, both highly respected neuropsychologists and historians, spent years dissecting multilingual archival material and advance the notion that Gall was, first and foremost, a respectable anatomist and pathfinder. Stanley Finger and Paul Eling's magnificent and deeply researched book Franz Joseph Gall: Naturalist of the Mind, Visionary of the Brain is the first full and definitive biography of Gall, and shows us much more than his absurd attachment to skull configurations. Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828), born in Tiefenbronn (Germany) and educated in Vienna (Austria), was the founder of phrenology a recent book claims this odd and dismissed theory has overshadowed his other achievements as an anatomist. I am certain neurologists see phrenology as a bunch of malarkey. ![]() The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific.The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia.The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology.
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