ABSTRACT

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894) was a Boston physician, a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School, and a writer of prose and poetry for general audiences. He was also one of the most famous American wits of the nineteenth century and a celebrity not bashful about exposing costly, absurd, and potentially harmful medical fads. One of his targets was phrenology, and the current article examines how he learned about phrenology during the 1830s as a medical student in Boston and Paris, and his head-reading with Lorenzo Fowler in 1858. It then turns to what he told readers of the Atlantic Monthly (in 1859) and Harvard medical students (in 1861) about phrenology being a pseudoscience and how phrenologists were duping clients. By looking at what Holmes was stating about cranioscopy and practitioners of phrenology in both humorous and more serious ways, historians can more fully appreciate the “bumpy” trajectory of one of the most significant medical and scientific fads of the nineteenth century.

摘要

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894) 是一位波士顿医生、哈佛医学院的医学教授，也是一位为普通读者撰写散文和诗歌的作家。他还是 19 世纪最著名的美国才子之一，也是一位对揭露昂贵、荒谬且可能有害的医疗时尚毫不害羞的名人。他的目标之一是颅相学，目前的文章考察了他在 1830 年代作为医学生在波士顿和巴黎是如何学习颅相学的，以及他在 1858 年与洛伦佐·福勒 (Lorenzo Fowler) 的头颅阅读。然后转向他告诉读者的大西洋月刊（1859 年）和哈佛医学院学生（1861 年）关于颅相学是一门伪科学以及颅相学家如何欺骗客户。通过以幽默和更严肃的方式查看福尔摩斯对颅骨镜检查和颅相学从业者的描述，历史学家可以更充分地理解 19 世纪最重要的医学和科学时尚之一的“颠簸”轨迹。