Originating in the late 18th century in the work of an Austrian physician, Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), Phrenology is best known as a means of reading the bumps on the head. Each specific area of the cranium was believed to correspond to a mental faculty or aptitude, as inscribed on Phrenological busts and charts. By gauging the relative sizes of the "bumps", it was thought possible to make an overall assessment of an individual's character, its strengths, weaknesses and potential.

Phrenology spread rapidly throughout Europe and particularly the USA in the first half of the 19th century with the work of Spurtzheim, Fowler and others. It became hugely popular as a means of character assessment, the selection of marital partners, education of children and career paths. Many famous figures of the age submitted themselves to the Phrenologist's art - Queen Victoria, George Elliot, Karl Marx, Charles Baudelaire, Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe, to name a few. Phrenology was used in the diagnosis of the mentally insane, as evidence in criminal trials, even the selection of US presidential candidates.