Plate Vb Human Skull, engraving by William Miller
Engravings of the Skeleton of the Human Body. John Gordon MD. Blackwood, Edinburgh 1818
(http://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2009/12/27/science-art-human-skull-by-william-miller/)
Anonymous [Treatise on physiognomy. (Netherlands?, ca. 1790)
(http://morbidanatomy.blogspot.com/2008/02/anonymous-treatise-on-physiognomy.html)
Physiognomy is the science of relating an individual's character, personality, and temperament to the shape of his or her face, head, and/or body. The theories behind it go back to Hippocrates, who believed that physical characteristics of the human body revealed personality traits; Aristotle performed studies on how hair, limbs and facial features predicted personality and temperament. Such theories thrived throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and the noted Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576) was one of its main proponents. By the 18th century, the study of physiognomy was still taken very seriously as a medical topic, with important additions to the field made by Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801). Franz Josef Gall (1758-1828) attempted to make its study even more scientific by measuring human and animal craniums to find correlations between skull shape and behavior, founding the field of phrenology.
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