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1 results

  • 10 - Quackery and Holmes’s Head Reading

  • Stanley Finger, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book:
    Mark Twain, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the Head Readers
    Published online:
    17 April 2023
    Print publication:
    06 April 2023, pp 208-225

  • Summary

    When Holmes returned to America in December 1835, he quickly completed the requirements for his Harvard medical degree and began practicing medicine. Soon after, he began teaching at Dartmouth and then Harvard. He was now using his pulpit and pen to rail against superstitions, quackery, and unsubstantiated beliefs and therapies in medicine, while making seminal contributions to his profession. He gave a lecture on phrenology in 1850, but it is not clear what he communicated. We also know that he had several phrenology books in his personal collection and used the university’s libraries, also meeting with other New England writers interested in the subject. Wanting to learn more, he had Lorenzo Fowler evaluate his head in 1859, twelve years before Mark Twain used the same phrenologist for his “little test.” What Fowler reported was preserved and is presented. Importantly, Holmes was now prepared to state what he thought about phrenology and the head readers in public.