Phrenology is by far my favorite 19th century pseudo-science. The idea behind phrenology is simple: a person’s skull shape determines personality traits.

Here’s what wiki has to say about it:

Phrenologists believed that the mind has a set of different mental faculties, with each particular faculty represented in a different area of the brain. These areas were said to be proportional to a person’s propensities, and the importance of the given mental faculty. It was believed that the cranial bone conformed in order to accommodate the different sizes of these particular areas of the brain in different individuals, so that a person’s capacity for a given personality trait could be determined simply by measuring the area of the skull that overlies the corresponding area of the brain.

Imagine the dating implications this must have had as Victorian women and men went to odd lengths to size up the skull protrusions in a potential mate.

“Hey, Agnes, I hear that Wilfred has an amazing right frontal protrusion.”

“Oh, I hope so, Emma. Because every knows that I’m most definitely a literary, observing, knowing faculties kind of girl.”

Good times, for sure.