11 - Holmes’s Professor on “Bumpology”

Summary

Holmes was one of the founders of the Atlantic Monthly, which quickly achieved a large readership, helped by a pithy serial that appeared in 1857–58. This was Holmes’s The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. It involved an erudite man and others at a Boston boardinghouse, who expressed opinions on many subjects. The series proved so popular that he came forth with a sequel in 1859. He called it The Professor at the Breakfast-Table. Holmes used the Professor in the latter to pillory phrenology. He repeatedly referred to it as “pseudo-science,” explaining that it was based on only accepting positive cases and ignoring all exceptions. Using a two-column format and a lot of humor, his Professor contrasted what a phrenologist might tell a client and what he might reveal to his pupil. And he emphasized that phrenologists were not really reading heads, attending instead to other cues, such as how a client dressed and answered questions. The remainder of this chapter shows how others lampooned the head readers before Holmes, and presents his 1861 Harvard lecture, which has the same take-home message. Notably, he praises phrenologists in this lecture for helping to draw attention to human differences, inborn tendencies, and the brain.