Adopt a Skull and Save a Collection That Helped Debunk Phrenology

The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia wants you to adopt a skull. Among their strange and fascinating collection of medical artifacts and anatomical specimens is a collection of 139 skulls collected in the 1800s by Viennese anatomist Joseph Hyrtl, who was trying to debunk the then-popular pseudoscience of phrenology.

Your $200 donation pays for the initial restoration and remounting of a skull of your choosing, and gets your name on a small plaque next to your adopted skull for the next year.

The catalog of the skulls hints at many interesting stories. Some specimens have already been adopted, including the skulls of a Viennese prostitute, a notorious Thai criminal, and a tightrope walker who broke his neck (adopted by the editors of a blog called Skull-A-Day). The same goes for Geza Uirmeny of Hungary (or possibly Romania), who attempted suicide at age 70 by cutting his throat, but remarkably survived, and perhaps even more remarkably “lived until 80 without melancholy.”

And, alas, there’s Andrejew Sokoloff, who belonged to a Russian sect that practiced castration as a safeguard against ungodly lust. Sokoloff “died of self-inflicted removal of testicles,” according to museum records, but his skull will be well cared for thanks to the generosity of Judy and George Wohlreich.

There are roughly 100 skulls still awaiting adoption, says museum curator Anna Dhody. They include sailors, soldiers, robbers, and Gypsies. Anton Mikschik, a 17-year-old Moravian shoemaker’s apprentice, killed himself after getting caught stealing. Maria Falkensteiner, a Tyrolean maidservant, was just 22 when she died of meningitis. Joska Soltesz, a Hungarian reformist and soldier, died of pneumonia at 28.

The skulls have been in the museum’s collection since 1874. They include only 14 women, but represent a wide range of ages, from 8 to 80. Many died in poorhouses or jails, or from suicide or execution, which probably made it easier for Hyrtl’s associates to obtain the remains without facing resistance from surviving relatives. Such practices would be completely unacceptable today, but for 19th century anatomists it was standard procedure. In at least one case Hyrtl apparently employed the services of a grave robber.

Hyrtl taught anatomy at the University of Vienna, and he was a consummate collector. His personal collection may have once included the skull of Mozart. In addition to human skulls, he possessed 800 fish skeletons and more than 300 “organs of hearing” from a variety of animals.

Hyrtl lived during the heyday of phrenology, the idea that the brain was made up of discrete mental organs, each with a specific function. The size of each organ in a given person was thought to indicate the strength of the corresponding mental faculty. These ranged from things like benevolence and cautiousness to the propensity to bear lots of offspring. Because the skull remains soft during infancy, the thinking went, its external bumps reflected the size of the mental organs underneath — and, by proxy, the character of the person.

“Phrenology was an accepted science, and what went hand in hand with that at the time was the assumption that the Caucasian race was the most superior race,” Dhody said.

It’s all bunk, of course. Today that’s obvious. Hyrtl didn’t buy it either, but his reasons weren’t entirely scientific. A devout Catholic, he believed that the mind and brain developed according to God’s plan and therefore had no relationship to any measurements of the skull, which like any part of the body would be subject to forces in the natural world. He set out to prove this by collecting skulls.

He hoped to show — and did — that there was as much variation in cranial anatomy within the European Caucasian population as there was between different racial groups. His findings undermined the racist suppositions of the phrenologists.

Although he was already famous in academic circles, Hyrtl did not make a lot of friends with this line of inquiry and seems to have been forced into early retirement from the university as a result, Dhody says. “He definitely made waves.” By the end of his life he found himself in financial trouble, and began selling off collections. The Mütter bought the skulls and an assortment of other anatomical specimens from Hyrtl in 1874 for 6,410 Austrian thalers, or about $4,800 at the time.

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