Part one of a two part series on Phrenology. The idea came to me while skimming the Darwin text a few weeks back. I’ve got four books today and two more for the next post: A System of Phrenology, George Combe, 1843 (WorldCat); Phrenology, J.G. Spurzheim, 1834 (WorldCat); Heads and Faces and How to Read Them, Nelson Sizer, 1891 (WorldCat); and Mental Functions of the Brain, Bernard Holland, 1901 (WorldCat).
Pseudoscience at its best!
This is actually the original cover to the book. I find it odd that the o is falling the opposite direction of the rest of the letters.
Larger size here.
Three out of the four books had spots (from water?) throughout the book.
All of them had an illstration of Pope Alexander VI. Man, they HATED that guy.
As before, more pictures on Flickr.
Ohh this is just fantastic! I work in a science library, and have been tasked with moving some of our older, crustier books elsewhere. I keep stumbling upon things I’d like to photograph but I never remember to pull them. The conference papers collection from the 1970s: omg, delicious use of bad fonts and what I can only guess was the “in” color of nectarine for the covers. I found a very old printing of a book by Newton himself, too, which I now will go retrieve! Cheers…
Yay for crusty books! PLEASE post pix and share the link!
Cool blog! I love these books.
FYI, those spots are called “foxing”. The name comes from the color, sort of reddish like a fox’s coat.
They’re because of fungus growth, or minerals in the paper.
The term you’re looking for with the letter O is “stress.”
These are great. I found your blog while researching phrenology for my next book. I also found this bit of ephemera over at this fantastic blog that you might find interesting -
http://thevirtualdimemuseum.blogspot.com/2008/10/chins-and-mouths-explained-by-harriet.html
All it takes in life to succeed is the right chin!