Usually termed a ‘pseudo-science’, phrenology was a popular pastime of the early nineteenth century that purported to reveal inner truths — much like psychoanalysis in our time. Naval commander Dumont d’Urville was flattered by a favourable reading of his cranial bumps received from a London phrenologist; when this was repeated in Paris he became a convert and secured Dumoutier’s services for the expedition to the South Seas. Charged with forming a collection of skulls and head-casts to support d’Urville’s racial mapping of the Pacific, the phrenologist produced the moulds for some fifty life-cast busts that — back in Paris — were photographed using the novel technique of daguerreotypy and published as lithographs in an atlas documenting the expedition’s anthropological discoveries.
Metamorphosis
Usually termed a ‘pseudo-science’, phrenology was a popular pastime of the early nineteenth century that purported to reveal inner truths — much like psychoanalysis in our time. Naval commander Dumont d’Urville was flattered by a favourable reading of his cranial bumps received from a London phrenologist; when this was repeated in Paris he became a convert and secured Dumoutier’s services for the expedition to the South Seas. Charged with forming a collection of skulls and head-casts to support d’Urville’s racial mapping of the Pacific, the phrenologist produced the moulds for some fifty life-cast busts that — back in Paris — were photographed using the novel technique of daguerreotypy and published as lithographs in an atlas documenting the expedition’s anthropological discoveries.