Introduction:

Phrenology was widely practiced in the 19th century as a form of personal aptitude testing, therapeutic reporting, and emotional predicator for middle-class Americans ambitious for a successful life. Everybody who wanted to be anybody and insisted they were somebody had the contents of their brain read for self-instruction. Many of the charts analyzing character were published, including those of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Clara Barton. One of the most readable charts belonged to Moby Dick, whose large and bumpy head was indeed full of promise for an eventful career (Chapter 74: The Sperm Whale’s Head). The phrenology report testified to the complexity of needs, capacity, propensity, talent, and faculties of individuals in an emerging middling group of active persons who prided themselves on mental labor and transcendent goals. The adolescent Jane Addams at age fifteen was no exception. 20th century captives of certified “experts” and their large fees authorized by “scientific” disciplines have not appropriately understood the significance of Phrenology as a successful pseudo-science in the nineteenth century.

Following is the “Contents of Jane Addams’s Head” as examined by John L. Capen in 1876. The document has not appeared in the literature (recently Deliberto mentioned it in passing haste with no source). It is found in the Microfilm Edition of the Jane Addams Papers, I-198. The spelling observes the original handwritten manuscript. Burt