Phrenology bust

Phrenologists believed that specific personality traits reside in certain areas of the brain, and that by measuring the corresponding area of the skull, a person’s capacity for a particular trait could be determined. Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1811-1896) one of  phrenology’s leading proponents mapped these various areas and their associated traits, and the bust served as an aid for followers and practitioners of phrenology to conduct an accurate “reading” of a person’s character.