A plaster phrenology bust inscribed Franz Joseph Gall,

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MEDICAL WORKS OF ART AND INSTRUMENTS The Pierre-Louis Carquet (1798-1859) "Musée phrénologique" - a collection of phrenological death-masks Dr Pierre-Louis Carquet was born on 6 May 1798 (17 floréal, an 6 in the Napoleonic calendar) at Sommesous, in Marne. His "Bachelier-ès-Lettres" certificate, received on 17 December 1821 (no.7320), was signed by, amongst others, Baron Georges Cuvier, the celebrated anatomist and paleo-biologist; and his Diploma of Doctor of Medicine (No.2810), dated 19 August 1824, is certified by Denis Frayssinous, archbishop of Hermopolis, First Chaplain to the King, peer of the realm and grand-maître of the University. Carquet's practice was in Sézanne, a small town of 5,000 population, in the department of Marne and on 11 February 1828 he was married to Louise Adélaïde Agathe Bertin in the nearby La Chapelle-Véronges. The bride's father was a landowner and the local mayor. The marriage contract records that the bride brought with her a dowry of 5000 francs, clothing, jewellery and lace, and an annual rente of 600 francs. A daughter, Félicie, was born in 1830 but died in 1839; a second daughter, Cécile, born in 1845 in Paris and was married in 1867 to army officer Léon Chambert. She died two years later, leaving a son, Camille, who was grandfather of Isabelle Chambert-Loir, the wife of the vendor. In 1842, the Carquets settled at La Chapelle-Véronges, where they lived in a small lodging attached to a barn on one of M. Bertin's farms. The house is still occupied by the family, and it was in the cellar there that 28 busts from the "musée phrénologique" were discovered. Carquet also practised in the villages of the surrounding countryside. One of his accounts books shows that he practised throughout an area of approximately 15-20km around his home. The books also mention childbirth, fractures, bandages, typhoid, pleuresy and so on. In 1850, the Minister of Agriculture awarded him a silver medal in recognition of his services during a cholera epidemic. In 1852, Carquet returned to Sézanne for three years and then moved to practice in Saint-Maurice, a canton of Chrenton. Charenton was home to the infamous insane asylum, whose most notorious inmate was the Marquis de Sade, and the building of Carquet's "musée phrénologique" probably dates from around this time. Judging by the names on the busts, and the presence of one inscribed "Idiot de Charenton", it is probable that Carquet either had them commissioned or even made them himself. PHRENOLOGY Although he did not coin the term himself, Dr François-Joseph Gall (1758-1828) was the inventor of what is known as phrenology, a pseudo-medical discipline that aspired to the status of a science. Phrenology rests on establishing a relationship between mental characteristics and the characteristics of the surface of the cranium, certain bumps and irregularities being considered as indicative of mental propensities, such as a penchant for theft, or, conversely, indicating moral or intellectual superiority. On the publication of Gall's first works, his theories were both heralded as a brilliant success, and subjected to the most violent critiques. Gall was a Viennese doctor who had studied under the celebrated physician Maximillian Stoll. Stoll emphasised a method of drawing conclusion from a collection of empirical facts, a characteristic which became the cornerstone of Gall's own work. After collecting and examining numerous animal and human skulls and brains, in 1796 Gall began lecturing on the system he had developed, which he called "Schädellehre" or "organology". And it was through there lectures that, Gall first attained a sort of international celebrity when Emperor Franz II banned him from public speaking on his subject in December 1801: he was branded a materialist, and accused of reducing the soul to a mere product of the brain, and of thereby implying that there was little or no difference between man and the animals. This prohibition prompted Gall, accompanied by his wife, her niece, his servant, his dissectionist and famulus Spurzheim, his wax modeller, two monkeys and a large portion of his skull and cast collection, to embark on a lecture tour of Europe, where invitations to speak were not slow in being extended. For his part, Gall was at pains to prevent his own theories' being confused with those of Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801), to whom is ascribed the invention of the discipline of physionomy. Physionomy was similarly a pseudo-medical discipline, propounded as a science by its practitioners; it concerns itself with the relationship between facial characteristics and personality, in a superficially similar way to that in which the physical aspects of the cranium are proposed as revealing something of the psychic make-up of the patient in phrenology. Physionomy, however, was never approached in so rigorous a fashion as phrenology, and whilst the practice of drawing conclusions from empirical evidence was necessarily its major strength, it lacked the scientific approach of phrenology; Gall himself was in fact a highly skilled dissectionist, and credited with making huge advances in medical science's understanding of the physical and nervous make-up of the brain. In response to early attacks on his work, Gall tried to refine his science and provide a mass of empirical verification. To this end he concentrated on studies of the minds of the genius, the criminal and the socially dispossessed. To counter accusations that his studies implied that the soul and the will were little more than manifestations of physical attributes, Gall claimed that the relationships he had discovered implied not predetermined characteristics, but propensities, whilst the actual resultant act brought about by these propensities was a product of the will. It was for precisely this reason that he was in favour of the death penalty. He further suggested that the application of poultices to the head might go someway to countering the criminal's natural inclination for wrongdoing. Gall lived in France, where his works received a mixed response. Napoleon did not approve, and many writers of the day, most notably Chateaubriand, were critical. Similarly, the philosopher Etienne Bonnot de Condillac and his followers, including Frangois-Pierre-Gonthier Maine de Biran were particularly vocal in their opposition. In 1821 his canditature for membership of the acadamie française was a crashing failure. He did, however, have his supporters, and even had several sympathisers in the Church, despite the fact that his works had been proscribed by Rome. In the world of medicine, the reaction was similarly mixed, but he could count on the support of celebrated surgeon Frangois-Joseph-Victor Broussais amoungst a few distinguished others. Gall's former dissectionist, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832), had split from Gall in about 1812, over an undisclosed falling-out. Despite having merely contributed comments and notes and arranged the illustrations, his name had appeared with Gall's on the first two volumes. Leaving Paris, Spurzheim's own first work on the subject was published in London in 1815. In it he claimed to have made improvements on Gall's system, and he was in fact the first to publish an illustration of the head with a craniographic layout of the organs (including six more than in Gall's system). Although Gall had produced illustrations of the skull, Spurzheim's approach was designed far more to appeal to a popular audience, and indeed it was him rather than Gall who popularised the term "phrenology". Spurzheim also furthered the cause in a highly public dispute with Edinburgh anatomist Dr John Gordon, culminating in an apparently splendid display of brain dissection by Spurzheim in Gordon's own theatre. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the popularity of phrenology was on the wane. Experiments had been made amidst great ceremony on the crania of Napoleon and infamous double-murderer Jean-Pierre Lacenaire (see Lot3), but their findings were inconclusive: the first revealed little evidence of genius; the second, little evidence of propensities to murder. In England, a composite work made up from Gall's writing sold more than 100,000 copies, but phrenology never really escaped its reputation as an occult or pseudo-science and under the Second Empire in France, its decline in popularity was swift. BIBLIOGRAPHY van WYHE, J., The History of Phrenology on the Web, https://www.jmvanwyhe.freeserve.co.uk, (October 2001) GALL, F.-J., (& SPURZHEIM, J.G.: vols 1 & 2 only), Anatomie et physionomie du système nerveux en général et du cerveau en particulier, 4 vols. (Paris, 1810-1819)

Details

A plaster phrenology bust inscribed Franz Joseph Gall,
-- 12¾in. (32.5cm.) high

See Colour Illustration

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