Staum, Martin S. (2003). Labeling People: French Scholars on Society, Race and Empire, 1815–1848. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0773525801. Archived from the original on 2023-02-05 . Retrieved 2016-01-27.

Essentially, phrenologists believed that the larger or more prominent a region was, the more likely that person was to have a particular personality trait. Gall believed that an enlarged organ meant that a patient used that particular organ extensively. According to phrenology, there are anywhere between 26 and 40 distinct regions, or “organs,” in the brain associated with mental facilities. The bigger the region relative to the rest of the skull, the more Gall believed it was used. As a boy growing up in 18th-century Germany, Franz Joseph Gall developed a theory about his classmates. Those who memorized facts and figures easily, Gall mused, seemed to all have large eyes and foreheads. As an adult, Gall turned this observation into a science — organology, later called phrenology. Having murdered a man in cold blood, they piratically seized a boat in northern Tasmania, and crossed the Bass Strait, landing somewhere near Western Port. They then stole horses, held up travellers, and shot anyone who got in their way.It was for this reason that Lombroso made tattoos a dominant symptom of the pathological criminal (the striking illustrations in L’Uomo Delinquente are an abundant resource for the historian Additionally, he added six further facilities and changed many of the descriptions of the remaining organs. Spurzheim also categorized the organs into larger categories, which were based on propensities, sentiments, and intellect. Several literary critics have noted the influence of phrenology [84] (and physiognomy) in Edgar Allan Poe's fiction. [85]

About 20 years later, a young neurologist named David Ferrier, who was studying localized areas of brain function, commented that Gage's case seemed to support some ideas from phrenology. "The phrenologists have, I think, good grounds for localising the reflective faculties in the frontal regions of the brain," he noted. The scientists found that there was no correlation between phrenological claims and the actual structure of the skull. Implications of Gall’s phrenology on modern neuroscience The anatomy and physiology of the human body (Volume 1) – Digital Collections – National Library of Medicine". collections.nlm.nih.gov. Archived from the original on 2021-06-03 . Retrieved 2020-09-25. Parssinen, T. M. (Autumn 1974). "Popular Science and Society: The Phrenology Movement in Early Victorian Britain". Journal of Social History. 8 (1): 1–20. doi: 10.1353/jsh/8.1.1. JSTOR 3786523. PMID 11632363.

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In 1800, Gall teamed up with Johann Christoph Spurzheim to further research this theory. The two worked together for a dozen years before having a falling out. Spurzheim became intrigued with the psychosocial potential of this new science, believing it could empower people to improve themselves. He renamed the practice "phrenology," defined it as "the science of the mind," and set out on a lecture tour to preach the wondrous new concept throughout Britain. It caught on like wildfire, igniting interest in Scottish lawyer George Combe, who in 1820 would establish the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, the first and foremost phrenology group in Great Britain.

So too were the medical men who dissected the bodies of executed criminals. Like Bradley and O’Connor’s, dissections involved a minute examination of the internal structures of the brain, combined with a more general analysis of the bumps and depressions of the skull; all as part of the search to establish brain-based criminality. Ultimately, criminal phrenology would serve as the foundation for the development of the positivist biological school of criminology.

In 1809 Gall began writing his principal [21] work, The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and of the Brain in Particular, with Observations upon the possibility of ascertaining the several Intellectual and Moral Dispositions of Man and Animal, by the configuration of their Heads. It was not published until 1819. In the introduction to this main work, Gall makes the following statement in regard to his doctrinal principles, which comprise the intellectual basis of phrenology: [22] Gall, “Schreiben über seinen bereits geendigten Prodromus…”; Wegner, Franz Joseph Gall; van Wyhe, Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism. In essence, Young argued that Gall’s methodology was circular, with each new case strengthening his belief that he had found a valid correlation (Young, 1968; Greenblatt, 1995). Although Gall believed that the phrenological structure of brains was fixed, his successors contended that these traits were malleable. This provided justification for phrenology as an early biological theory of crime as well as in educating those of lower classes about their position in society by 19th-century advocates.