Article ID: CBB316165905

Mark Twain’s Phrenological Experiment: Three Renditions of His “Small Test” (2020)

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Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), the American humorist and author better known as Mark Twain, was skeptical about clairvoyance, supernatural entities, palm reading, and certain medical fads, including phrenology. During the early 1870s, he set forth to test phrenology—and, more specifically, its reliance on craniology—by undergoing two head examinations with Lorenzo Fowler, an American phrenologist with an institute in London. Twain hid his identity during his first visit, but not when he returned as a new customer three months later, only to receive a very different report about his humor, courage, and so on. He described his experiences in a short letter written in 1906 to a correspondent in London, in humorous detail in a chapter that appeared in a posthumous edition of his autobiography, and in The Secret History of Eddypus, the World Empire, a work of fiction involving time travel, which he began to write around 1901 but never completed. All three versions of Twain’s phrenological ploy are presented here with commentary to put his descriptions in perspective.

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Article Paul Eling; Stanley Finger (2020) Gall and Phrenology: New perspectives. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences (pp. 1-4). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Sysling, Fenneke
Rachel E. Walker
William Hughes
Stuart Mathieson
Thompson, Courtney Elizabeth
Welchman, Jennifer
Concepts
Science and literature
Phrenology
Experiments and experimentation
Popular culture
Public understanding of science
Science and culture
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
18th century
Places
United States
Europe
Great Britain
United Kingdom
London (England)
South Africa
Institutions
Victoria Institute
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