Phrenology is a pseudoscience that involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits. It is based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions or modules. It was said that the brain was composed of different muscles, so those that were used more often were bigger, resulting in the different skull shapes. This led to the reasoning behind why everyone had bumps on the skull in different locations. The brain "muscles" not being used as frequently remained small and were therefore not present on the exterior of the skull. Although both of those ideas have a basis in reality, phrenology generalize beyond empirical knowledge in a way that departs from science. The central phrenological notion that measuring the contour of the skull can predict personality traits is discredited by empirical research. Developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall in 1796, the discipline was influential in the 19th century, especially from about 1810 until 1840. The principal British centre for phrenology was Edinburgh, where the Edinburgh Phrenological Society was established in 1820.
Peter Mark Roget was a British physician, natural theologian, lexicographer and founding secretary of The Portico Library. He is best known for publishing, in 1852, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, a classified collection of related words. He also read a paper to the Royal Society about a peculiar optical illusion in 1824, which is often regarded as the origin of the persistence of vision theory that was later commonly used to explain apparent motion in film and animation.
Phineas Taylor Barnum was an American showman, businessman and politician remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus with James Anthony Bailey.
Johanna Maria Lind was a Swedish opera singer, often called the "Swedish Nightingale". One of the most highly regarded singers of the 19th century, she performed in soprano roles in opera in Sweden and across Europe, and undertook an extraordinarily popular concert tour of the United States beginning in 1850. She was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music from 1840.
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organisation for scientific education and research, based in the City of Westminster. It was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, including Henry Cavendish and its first president, George Finch. Its foundational principles were diffusing the knowledge of, and facilitating the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements, as well as enhancing the application of science to the common purposes of life.
The University of Bridgeport is a nonprofit private university in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The university is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education. In 2021, the university was purchased by Goodwin University; it retained its own name, brand, and board of trustees.
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is an American traveling circus company billed as The Greatest Show on Earth. It and its predecessor have run shows from 1871, with a hiatus from 2017 to 2023. They operate as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. The circus started in 1919 when the Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth, a circus created by P. T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey, was merged with the Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows. The Ringling brothers had purchased Barnum & Bailey Ltd. in 1907 following Bailey's death in 1906, but ran the circuses separately until they were merged in 1919.
Barnum is an American musical with a book by Mark Bramble, lyrics by Michael Stewart, and music by Cy Coleman. It is based on the life of showman P. T. Barnum, covering the period from 1835 through 1880 in America and major cities of the world where Barnum took his performing companies. The production combines elements of traditional musical theater with the spectacle of the circus. The characters include jugglers, trapeze artists and clowns, as well as such real-life personalities as Jenny Lind and General Tom Thumb.
George Combe was a Scottish lawyer and a spokesman of the phrenological movement for over 20 years. He founded the Edinburgh Phrenological Society in 1820 and wrote The Constitution of Man (1828). After marriage in 1833, Combe devoted his later years to promoting phrenology internationally.
Joice Heth was an African-American woman who was exhibited by P.T. Barnum with the false claim that she was the 161-year-old nursing mammy of George Washington. Her exhibition under these claims, and her public autopsy, gained considerable notoriety.
Adam John Forepaugh was an American horse trader and circus owner. From 1865 through 1890 his circus operated under various names including Forepaugh's Circus, Forepaugh's Gigantic Circus and Menagerie, The Forepaugh Show, 4-PAW Show, The Adam Forepaugh Circus, and Forepaugh & The Wild West.
Sir James Crichton-Browne MD FRS FRSE was a leading Scottish psychiatrist, neurologist and eugenicist. He is known for studies on the relationship of mental illness to brain injury and for the development of public health policies in relation to mental health. Crichton-Browne's father was the asylum reformer Dr William A.F. Browne, a prominent member of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society and, from 1838 until 1857, the superintendent of the Crichton Royal at Dumfries where Crichton-Browne spent much of his childhood.
Barnum's American Museum was located at the corner of Broadway, Park Row, and Ann Street in what is now the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City, from 1841 to 1865. The museum was owned by famous showman P. T. Barnum, who purchased Scudder's American Museum in 1841. The museum offered both strange and educational attractions and performances. Some were extremely reputable and historically or scientifically valuable, while others were less so.
Dr John Epps was an English physician, phrenologist and homeopath. He was also a political activist, known as a champion of radical causes on which he preached, lectured and wrote in periodicals.
William Street Hutchings, also known as Professor Hutchings and the Lightning Calculator, was a 19th-century math prodigy and mental calculator who P. T. Barnum first billed as the "Boy Lightning Calculator". He later worked as a sideshow barker and wrote a book called The Lightning Calculator.
Dr William Alexander Francis Browne (1805–1885) was one of the most significant British asylum doctors of the nineteenth century. At Montrose Asylum (1834–1838) in Angus and at the Crichton Royal in Dumfries (1838–1857), Browne introduced activities for patients including writing, group activity and drama, pioneered early forms of occupational therapy and art therapy, and initiated one of the earliest collections of artistic work by patients in a psychiatric hospital. In an age which rewarded self-control, Browne encouraged self-expression and may therefore be counted alongside William Tuke, Vincenzo Chiarugi and John Conolly as one of the pioneers of the moral treatment of mental illness. Sociologist Andrew Scull has identified Browne's career with the institutional climax of nineteenth century psychiatry.
"Browne was one of the reformers of the asylum care of the insane whose improvements and innovations were chronicled in his annual reports from The Crichton Royal Institution, but who in addition published almost on the threshold of his career a sort of manifesto of what he wished to see accomplished...." Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine (1963) Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry 1535–1860, page 865.
John van Wyhe, is a British historian of science, with a focus on Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, at the National University of Singapore. He holds various academic and research positions, ranging from founder and director of The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online, Scientific Associate, The Natural History Museum (London), a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a Member of the British Society for the History of Science. He has given more than 50 public lectures on Darwin in more than a dozen countries. He lectures and broadcasts on Darwin, evolution, science and religion and the history of science around the world. He also wrote The Darwin Experience, a biographical book about Charles Darwin.
Lydia Folger Fowler was a pioneering American physician, professor of medicine, and activist. She was the second American woman to earn a medical degree and one of the first American women in medicine and a prominent woman in science. She married a phrenologist and her daughter, Jessie Allen Fowler, continued their ideas.
Thomas Turner, FRCS, FLS, was an English surgeon known primarily for his involvement in developing medical education outside its then traditional base of London. He established a medical school in Manchester and was both a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Linnean Society of London.
The Greatest Showman is a 2017 American biographical pop musical drama film directed by Michael Gracey from a screenplay written by Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon, and a story by Bicks. The film stars an ensemble cast led by Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams, Rebecca Ferguson, and Zendaya. Featuring nine original songs from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and a score composed by John Debney and Joseph Trapanese, the film is based on the story and life of P.T. Barnum, a showman and entertainer, and his creation of the Barnum & Bailey Circus and the lives of its star attractions.
