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2 results

Mark Twain, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the Head Readers
  • Literature, Humor, and Faddish Phrenology
  • Stanley Finger
  • Published online:
    17 April 2023
    Print publication:
    06 April 2023
  • Having a phrenological 'head reading' was one of the most significant fads of the nineteenth century – a means for better knowing oneself and a guide for self-improvement. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) had a lifelong yet long overlooked interest in phrenology, the pseudoscience claiming to correlate skull features with specialized brain areas and higher mental traits. Twain's books are laced with phrenological terms and concepts, and he lampooned the head readers in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He was influenced by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who also used his humor to assail head readers and educate the public. Finger shows that both humorists accepted certain features of phrenology, but not their skull-based ideas. By examining a fascinating topic at the intersection of literature and the history of neuroscience, this engaging study will appeal to readers interested in phrenology, science, medicine, American history, and the lives and works of Twain and Holmes.

  • Leviathan and the Soft Animal: Medical Humanism and the Invertebrate Models for Higher Nervous Functions, 1950s–90s

  • Fabio De Sio
  • Journal:
    Medical History / Volume 55 / Issue 3 / July 2011
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    17 May 2012, pp. 369-374
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  • Sometime between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, a ‘Monsieur Jourdain syndrome’ seems to have spread among basic researchers and clinicians in fields as diverse as neurology, psychology, psychiatry, behavioural studies, physiology, biochemistry and pharmacology. Almost overnight, they realised that they were but neuroscientists.