WEBVTT - From the Vault: Brain and Head Theft, Part 2 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.760 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:10.760 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:14.760 Vault episode time. This one originally aired on February four. 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:18.440 It is Brain and Head Theft, Part two, picking up 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:21.759 from Part one, which ran last Saturday. So stick around 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:28.120 and enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:36.839 of My Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:39.919 Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:42.279 Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:46.760 discussion of stolen heads and stolen brains. That's right, If 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:49.440 you didn't listen to part one, go back listen to 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:52.600 part one, because that's where we initially get into it, 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:55.360 and we talked about like some ancient ideas about what 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:57.920 the brain did and uh. Then we get into some 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:03.920 examples of of brains that have been preserved uh consensually, 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:06.520 and then get a little bit into the theft. And 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:08.800 we're gonna get more into the theft here in this episode, 0:01:08.800 --> 0:01:10.399 and then towards the end, we're gonna get into some 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:15.759 of the mythology and folklore of disembodied heads. That's right. 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:17.800 So at the end of the last episode, we were 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:20.840 talking about the theft of the skull of the Austrian 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:26.120 classical composer Franz Joseph Haydn, which was stolen by phrenologists 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:30.360 who clung to the mistaken belief that Haydn's musical genius 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:34.640 would somehow be inscribed in the bone of his cranium. 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:37.319 But Hayden isn't the only figure like this. There there 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.920 are other figures in history with some kind of reputation 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:43.920 for genius of one kind or another, who have had 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:46.760 their heads or their brains stolen in the hope that 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:50.920 these remnants would somehow explain to science what made them 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:54.160 so smart. And of course, in the case of phrenology, 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:58.040 this was an utterly hopeless endeavor, just because phrenology is 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:01.960 total quack pseudoscience. It's end to end. But this has 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:06.280 also happened even in ages of more legitimate neuroscience, and 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:09.240 still maybe doesn't tell us as much as the people 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:12.360 who stole these brains hoped that it would. So I 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:15.440 want to talk about another famous stolen head that is 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:18.280 not even for any pretense of neuroscience or any other 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:20.240 type of research. I want to talk about the head 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:24.080 of Jeremy Bentham. Uh, so you might know Jeremy Bentham 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:25.960 best for I don't know what do people know him 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:28.320 best for these days? Maybe for the for the idea 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:31.840 of the panopticon, which he was a promoter of. That 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:33.919 would be where our listeners might have heard his name 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:36.720 on this show before. Yeah, Jeremy Bentham was a highly 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:41.720 influential eighteenth and nineteenth century philosopher and social reformer from England, 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:45.720 and he's usually thought of as one of the founders 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:48.800 of liberalism and one of the modern founders of the 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:52.760 utilitarian theory of ethics. So, in other words, right and 0:02:52.800 --> 0:02:55.520 wrong would be determined not by what the King says, 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.600 or what the Bible says, or not by any deontological duty, 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:03.040 but by what course of action would provide the greatest 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.720 happiness to the greatest number of people. And Bentham is 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:09.200 kind of interesting because if you read through a collection 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:13.080 of his opinions and arguments today, it is this strange 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:17.079 mixture of things that for the time were extremely radical, 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:22.200 progressive and by our modern ethics admirable, but also things 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:26.640 that are bizarrely horrifying. So so, for example, you know, 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.520 he was in favor of total political equality, for women 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:33.880 and the decriminalization of homosexuality. But he also did not 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:36.600 like the idea of privacy. He thought that was a 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:40.840 bad concept. And of course this is exemplified in the 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:45.160 idea of the panopticon, in which prisoners have no privacy 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:49.880 or and and do not know if the the gaze 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:54.160 of the like the the lone observation tower, if they 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.000 are looking at them in any given moment, you know. Right, 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:00.640 So he would dig where we are now in some respects. Right, 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:04.160 Oh my god, Jeremy Bentham. I would love to know 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:09.440 Jeremy Bentham's thoughts on the modern digital landscape. But anyway, 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:12.280 that the relevant part of the Jeremy Bentham story today 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:17.080 is that his head still exists today above ground in 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:23.320 a grotesque, incompetently mummified form, and and it keeps getting stolen. 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:26.400 I was reading a piece about this that was a 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:30.839 transcript of a CBC radio piece which featured an interview 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:34.560 with the Subadra Doss, who is a curator of collections 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:38.440 at University College London. The interviewer was named Carol Off 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:43.520 and this CBC piece includes some excellent biographical tidbits right 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:47.000 at the top about Bentham's weird and interesting personality apart 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:49.599 from his politics and his public work. For example, it 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:53.400 says that Bentham had a walking stick that he called Dapple, 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:57.200 he had a teapot that he referred to as Dicky, 0:04:57.279 --> 0:04:59.840 and he had an elderly cat that was named the 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:04.960 Reverend Sir John Langborne. Oh that's that's I don't know 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:07.440 if that's a good cat name. That's a bit too human. 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:09.880 I think it's funny when a dog has a very 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:11.680 human name. I don't I haven't made my mind up 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:13.960 about cats yet, I think, I guess I assume that's funny. 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:17.200 I find it cats work best when they have food names, 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:22.240 you know, okay, yeah, like biscuit or mochy or pound 0:05:22.279 --> 0:05:26.400 cake or um yeah, really anything rabby oli. I mean, 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:30.400 you can go go crazy with it, but generally speaking, yes, 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:32.320 it's something kind of cute and foods. He works well 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:34.920 with cats. I find I'm glad that we've all learned 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:38.520 that one day you plan to eat a cat. Well, 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:41.480 I mean it would really if that were the case, 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:43.719 and it's not, then we with the feeling would be 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:45.920 mutual between me and the cats, So I think the 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:49.039 cat would respect it. Oh yeah, if we were appreciating game. 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:51.280 Is that what they say? Yeah, totally if we were 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:54.440 small enough our cats what heat does yeah? Um, But anyway, 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:56.960 I thought that was a pretty good window into his personality. 0:05:57.120 --> 0:06:01.360 And uh. And so Bentham a cently had express wishes 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:04.000 for what would be done to his remains in the 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:06.680 event of his death, and they fall along some similar 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:10.400 lines of sensibility. So Bentham died in eighteen thirty two, 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:13.680 and when that happened, he wanted his dead body to 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:16.159 be preserved in a way that would allow him to 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:19.320 be wheeled out and presented to friends at parties in 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:23.440 case anybody missed seeing him. Take rob, I want you 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:25.719 to take what I just said and compare that to 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:30.160 the picture of his preserved head above. Well, you know, 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:34.840 it certainly would be a conversation starter or stopper at 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.960 any party. Uh. I mean it's pretty impressive looking. It 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:42.760 is identifiable as a head, even his head. Uh, it 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:46.799 kind of looks it has a very leathery consistency to it. Um. 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:51.840 The skin is you had kind of darkened and kind 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:55.680 of looks like a slim gem with these sling Yeah, 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:58.960 there's hair on it, which I'm guessing as perhaps his 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:03.840 original hair. Real hair. Yep. The eyes clearly are not 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:06.520 his original eyes appears to be a pair of glass 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.080 eyeballs that have been inserted into it, which you give 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:12.680 it this extra uncanny appearance because it looks like, you know, 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:15.040 the living dead. It looks like the eyes of a 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:18.840 of of a litch sing at you. But the look 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:22.000 on his face is also not terrifying. It's more serene. 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:24.880 It looks like he's patiently listening to you while you're 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:27.480 sharing a tidbit. Oh, I don't know how serene it. 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:29.240 I mean, I guess I kind of see what you're saying. 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:32.200 But he looks to me very like startled and appalled. 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:36.080 He looks like a a butler who has accidentally opened 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:38.720 a door to a room in which something obscene is 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:42.160 taking place. Oh, I get more of a like he's 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:44.880 patiently listening to you while you tell him something that 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:50.200 he personally finds boring. But okay, he's a good listener. Nonetheless. Okay, 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:51.920 so what was the deal with his head? Like? Why 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:54.760 is his head off of his dead body but they're 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:57.640 both preserved. Why does it look like that? Uh? To 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.920 quote from Doss in this interview, she says Bentham had 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:03.720 made a special request that his head be preserved in 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:07.160 the style of the Maori, the native New Zealanders. But 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:11.080 his friend Dr southwood Smith, who was tasked with creating 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:14.760 the auto icon, wasn't necessarily as practiced with that as 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:18.960 he probably would have liked to have been. And Dast 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:21.080 goes on, and so the result was a head that 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:24.680 southwood Smith said was not suitable for display, which is 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:27.960 why he had a wax model commissioned. That's the one 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:31.280 on display with the auto icon, which is the skeleton 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:35.480 in Bentham's own clothes. So so, according to Daston, the 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.960 head was desiccated here with sulfuric acid, and sometimes his 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:42.600 hair still falls out. But the situation is that there 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:47.880 are two separate necro icons of this utilitarian philosopher that 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:50.200 are both made out of his real body. There's his 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:53.959 body containing his bones and his clothes, topped with a 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:57.760 fake wax head, and that's on display at University College London, 0:08:57.800 --> 0:08:59.400 and Rob, I've got an image for you to look 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:02.880 at down below. Oh here, and then you also have 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:07.120 his severed head, poorly preserved that we just described, sometimes 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.440 kept separately, sometimes shown at the feet of the auto icon. 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:13.520 Of the rest of the body, because it's just this disgusting, 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:18.240 rotten looking beef jerky head. And then of course there's 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:20.520 the horrible body with a wax head that has these 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:25.160 gloves on it that look really just this is awful. Yeah, 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:28.760 the picture you shared that shows the the wax headed 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:32.360 figure with an actual skeleton inside of it, uh seated 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:34.720 and then there it at its feet indeed is the 0:09:34.760 --> 0:09:39.680 original head. And um, yeah, this looks fairly terrifying but 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:45.520 also symbolically potent. Maybe it's just because of the some 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:47.480 of the examples that I was looking at from say 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:50.600 Hindu iconography that we'll get into later. Like there, I 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:52.880 feel like this image is trying to tell me something 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:57.960 about about death. Yeah, it seems almost in the style 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:01.240 of the the Cephaloforce sing, you know, like the Saints 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:04.200 like San Denis in Paris, the Saints who carry their 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:06.319 own heads in their hands because of the legends where 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:08.840 they were decapitated but then just picked up their heads 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:12.280 and walked around did some miracles or something. Yeah, except 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.440 he's like saying, yeah, it's like, look, there's my head 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:18.560 down there. It's rotten, but I'm I'm one look at 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:22.559 this gorgeous wax head I'm boasting. So the story gets 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:24.640 weirder because we've got to get to the actual theft. 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:28.599 This was all according to Bentham's wishes, though the mummification 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:31.559 or preservation of the head got screwed up. Southwood Smith 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:34.000 did not do a good job with that, or at 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:36.760 least not to his own liking. And I don't know, 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:39.920 the results don't look great. But then the theft comes in, 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:44.800 because apparently Jeremy Bentham's actual preserved head has been repeatedly 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:48.920 stolen or kidnapped as a result of student pranks like 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:52.520 Doss points out that sometime in the nineteen nineties, Bentham's 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:56.840 head was quote kidnapped by uc l's rival university, King's 0:10:56.880 --> 0:10:59.920 College in London. So I assume it was stolen by 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:03.400 some kind of English version of Jim Magiluski from the Brain, 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:07.280 you know, a prank boy. And in fact, it seems 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:09.840 the head was stolen multiple times in its history. I 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:13.680 was reading a piece about this from Smith Journal that says, 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:15.920 quote once it was returned upon the making of a 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:19.000 charitable donation. On another occasion, it was recovered from a 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:22.640 luggage locker in Aberdeen. A man as clever as Bentham 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:25.440 should have been able to foresee the inevitable consequences of 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:30.560 spending eternity among students. Now, at some point the head 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:34.840 was recovered from what happened in the nineties these mischievous students, 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.360 and it was put back on display at least at 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:39.720 one point for an exhibit called what does it Mean 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.600 to be Human? Curating Heads at u c L. So 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:46.120 this is a head that apparently keeps getting stolen. Don't 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:48.040 know if it will ever be stolen again. I think 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:50.880 they are taking extreme measures to prevent that, but who 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:53.760 knows what's going to happen. But we should still say that, 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:58.200 at least in Bentham's case, this is consensual preservation in 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:02.720 a museum, despite a few uh en cephalocleptics over the years. 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:08.240 There are also lots of disturbing cases where someone's head 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:12.160 or brain ends up in a museum against their own wishes, 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.760 whether it's by the supposed forces of science and preservation 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:19.880 or some other forces that are doing the stealing. It 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:23.400 has happened plenty of times that heads, skulls, brains get 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.560 taken from somebody's body, whether they wanted that or not, 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:30.200 and end up in a museum. And and this brings 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:31.920 me to the next thing I wanted to talk about 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:34.360 to follow up on some of the uh, some of 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:38.840 the phrenology discussion from the last episode, because I feel 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:40.640 like I want to be a bit self critical here, 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:42.920 because I have to note that I feel a baseline 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:46.920 sympathy for the classic Indiana Jones line about the Cross 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:49.360 of Coronado in the Last Crusade when he says it 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:53.720 belongs in a museum. You know, I I really enjoy museums, 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:57.280 and I am instinctually drawn to the idea that it's 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:01.119 good to have artifacts preserved in play. Is like museums 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:04.360 places where you know, artifacts from history should be the 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:07.319 you know, the common heritage of all humankind to observe 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:09.760 and learn from. And so it's good that you get 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:11.480 to go see them in a museum in a place 0:13:11.480 --> 0:13:14.320 where they will be preserved as well as possible across time. 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:17.200 And this sounds good, but of course it can in 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:20.520 reality be an extremely fraught concept and just one of 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.640 the million complications We explore some of this in our 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:27.080 Invention episode on the First Museum is the question of 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:29.800 physical location. Like I think it is actually good that 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:33.160 artifacts from ancient history or even more recent history could 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:35.720 in some way be the common heritage of all human 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:38.199 kind to learn from. But they've got to physically be somewhere, 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:41.040 And it turns out that is often in like wealthy 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:44.520 European nations or in the United States, so like not 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:48.040 everybody actually has the same access to these artifacts. You know, 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:51.160 you've got to physically go to London or to Washington 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:53.720 or something to see them. Yeah, you have this this 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:59.000 um this this severe imbalance where say school children in 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:02.600 the United States can go to their local museum in 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:06.280 a major city and see artifacts of ancient Egypt, but 0:14:06.320 --> 0:14:09.120 those same artifacts are not on display at the local 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:12.880 museum for actual Egyptian children to see. They would have 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:15.600 to look at a reproduction or a picture in a 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:19.000 book or on the internet. Right. And of course another 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:21.640 big problem here is just the question of, like, how 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:24.680 do you source these artifacts when you're you're bringing them 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:27.680 into museum collections. A lot of times it's hard to 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:30.880 make a convincing argument that that what's happening in the 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:33.720 collection of these artifacts is not just stealing, is just 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.920 stealing from dead people. And so I think that there 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:38.960 are real dilemmas here. I say this as as a 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:42.040 lover of museums. Uh. And of course it's true even 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:44.840 of inanimate artifacts that are produced by people who are 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:47.920 long gone, but it's obviously even more fraught when you're 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:52.040 talking about things like the remains of human beings, especially 0:14:52.120 --> 0:15:01.600 human beings who lived relatively recently. Uh. And so this 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:03.240 brings me back to what we were talking about in 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:06.040 the Haydn segment of part one. We were talking about 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:10.960 the development of the pseudoscience of phrenology, which quick refresher. 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:15.480 This was a now completely debunked pseudoscience that was popular, 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:19.000 especially in like the first half of the nineteenth century, 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:21.600 popular throughout Europe, in the United States, and it was 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:26.240 the belief that you could infer mental characteristics of people 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:31.000 by measuring bumps and contours on their skulls. And this 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:33.200 is one of the this was one of the motivations 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:37.400 for the stealing of the of Franz Joseph Haydn's skull. Now, 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:41.240 there are some strains of phrenology that a person could 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:46.600 see as extremely wrong and pseudo scientific, but not super harmful, 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:49.000 or at least not more harmful than a belief in 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.480 like palm reading or something. You know, I'm just feeling 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:54.080 around on your head and doing a doing a little 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:58.440 personality test for you. Right, it's not accurate, there's no 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:03.200 science to it, but it's ultimately I guess harmless, right right, 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:05.440 I mean, I mean, I guess all pseudoscience in a 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:08.640 way is potentially harmful, but it's not It's not as 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:10.520 harmful as the other stuff we're about to talk to, 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:14.720 because there are these other strains and incarnations of phrenology 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:18.760 and other types of pseudoscience that are that are just 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:23.160 a straight up nightmare. Sometimes forms of racist pseudoscience aimed 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:27.480 at like proving that people with different skin colors were 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:30.480 a result of separate acts of divine creations, so they're 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.760 not even really all the same kind of human. Also 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:38.360 weird ideas of crackpot cranial criminology. Um, that didn't mean 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:41.120 to be so illiterated there, but in in the nineteenth 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:44.600 century especially, it was very common for proponents of phrenology 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:48.960 and other types of craniometry. So craniometry would be a 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:51.520 any kind of a belief system based on the measurements 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:55.200 of the skull, not necessarily like bumps, like phrenology. But 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:57.840 there were other people who just tried to collect a 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:01.560 bunch of skulls and measure them and draw in friendss. Uh. So, 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:03.560 so there were these things going on, and they would 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:07.320 cause people to gather these huge collections of human skulls, 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:11.639 supposedly to form the raw materials for their research. But 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:13.480 I was reading about this in that same book I 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:16.120 mentioned in the previous episode, the one by Francis Larson 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:20.280 called Severed, which this whole chapter is really, uh, really 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:23.960 horrifying and fascinating. Uh. It would lead these people to 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:26.919 gather these big collections of skulls that in practice, it 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:30.200 seems to me these collections were often just as much 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:34.040 as sort of personal museum exhibit or a morbid curio 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:38.479 collection to impress guests and wealthy benefactors as they were 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:42.760 even a failed attempt to actually gather data. And unfortunately, 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:46.119 it seems like most of these skulls collected for supposed 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:50.880 craniometric research in the eighteen hundreds were not donated consensually. 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:53.840 You can probably imagine where a lot of them came from. 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.200 A lot of them were stolen from graveyards and battlefields. 0:17:57.240 --> 0:18:03.080 Some came from prisons and morgues, spittals, workhouses, burial grounds 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:06.679 without the consultation of the owner or their family, and 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:09.760 often without even knowing who the person had actually been. 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:13.080 And as you might guess, the less wealth and power 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:15.919 the person had, the more likely that their skull might 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:19.439 be stolen after their death. Many came from cemeteries of 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:23.080 enslaved people in America. There are horrific details about the 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:26.480 harvesting of skulls from Native American people's during the wars 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:29.159 of expansion of the U. S Frontier into tribal lands, 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:33.520 and many came from just from poor people, from workhouses 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:36.720 and potter's fields. Larson as a whole chapter about this 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:40.600 horrible episode in history and her book Severed Um. But 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:44.720 a couple of these notorious skull collectors she mentions are 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:49.040 the English doctor Joseph Barnard Davis and the American physician 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:53.119 Samuel George Morton. Both were mainly working in the early 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:56.919 to mid nineteenth century, and she tells one anecdote about 0:18:57.160 --> 0:19:00.119 Barnard Davis that I wanted to read here, so she 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:03.920 says quote as a physician, Barnard Davis showed few qualms 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:07.520 when it came to head collecting. John Betto, a fellow doctor, 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:12.119 remembered that he looked on heads simply as potential skulls. 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:16.159 Betto recounted introducing Barnard Davis during his rounds at the 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:19.680 hospital to one of his patients, a sailor from Dubrovnik 0:19:19.920 --> 0:19:22.440 who had nearly drowned. It was being cared for at 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:25.760 the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Betto was treating the man for 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:30.919 gang green on the lung. Barnard Davis's curiosity was immediately piqued. Now, 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:33.719 he said to Betto, you know that man can't recover, 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:36.040 Do take care to secure his head for me when 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:38.880 he dies, for I have no cranium from that neighborhood. 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:42.240 I guess he was talking about the neighborhood of Dubrovnik. 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:46.399 And Uh. Then Larsen goes on. Luckily for the sailor, 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:49.800 Barnard Davis had been too enthusiastic in his diagnosis. The 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:53.919 patient made a full recovery, and Tibetto's amused relief, he 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:58.360 carried his head on his own shoulders back to hertzegovernor uh. 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:00.280 And so she says, like this is the is the 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:03.520 reality of what's often going on in skull collecting. It's 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:08.000 like basically totally ignoring the humanity of human beings. And 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:09.879 just being like, how am I going to get that skull? 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:13.560 It's like a like a cartoon where one cartoon character 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:16.640 looks at the other and just sees like food as 0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:20.760 a cannibalistic frenzy takes every except yeah, the Looney Tunes 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:23.160 where like they're in the lifeboat and like Donald Duck 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:25.760 looks at somebody and just imagines their body is like 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:29.240 a like a drumstick or something. Yeah, it also reminds 0:20:29.280 --> 0:20:32.320 me of that line and t s Eliott's Whispers of Immortality. 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:35.440 Webster was much possessed by death and saw the skull 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:38.880 and eat the skin. Now, it's also worth pointing out 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.440 that the findings of these early craniometrists have not really 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:45.600 held up to scientific scrutiny. Larson talks about this as well, 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:48.960 all of the problems with their supposed research. Uh, they 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:51.800 a lot of them were trying to make generalizations about 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:54.840 the mental qualities of large groups of people. Oh, you know, 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:57.240 you can see because of this trend in the skulls 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:00.320 of people from this part of the world that they 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:04.280 have these mental characteristics. And this was all based on 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:09.360 these skull measurements. But their research was plagued by poor methodology, 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:13.920 inconsistency and samples, inconsistency and measurements, fudging the data when 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:17.080 it didn't fit, etcetera. Larcent as a whole discussion on this, 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:19.520 it seems like once again we're we're dealing with something 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:23.320 that ultimately just amounted to bunk. Though I wanted also 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:25.680 to discuss a couple of points that she makes which 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:28.400 I thought were very useful and interpreting what was going 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:32.760 on here. Historically, one interesting issue was if people are 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:36.640 looking into, you know, these various questions, trying to understand 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:41.600 the human mind, trying to understand culture, trying to understand 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:46.840 mental processes, why the particular emphasis on skulls, like why 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:51.040 the phrenology and craniometry craze as a very bone focused 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:53.919 thing to begin with. Well, she talks about how the 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:58.240 physical characteristics of skulls just happened to lend themselves quite 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:02.320 well to the practical applications and interests of the people 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:05.760 who were in these fields. So she writes, quote one 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:10.440 Victorian physician James eight Ken MiGs noted that skulls are 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:15.639 easily prepared and preserved, maybe conveniently handled and surveyed. Considered 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:18.560 in various points of view and compared to each other. 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:23.120 Skulls are favorable specimens because they're small, hard, and robust. 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:26.560 They're more compact than whole skeletons, which means that they 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:30.200 can be relatively easily transported, and they're more durable than 0:22:30.240 --> 0:22:33.919 the messy tissues they contain, surviving for centuries on a 0:22:34.000 --> 0:22:38.240 museum shelf. They're surprisingly resistant to pressure, partly because of 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:41.880 their shape, but also because the skull, unlike longbones, has 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:44.960 no marrow, and skulls were thought to be the most 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:48.320 characteristic part of the human body because there were so 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:50.480 many ways in which one could be different from another. 0:22:50.800 --> 0:22:53.760 Full of nooks and crannies and holes and lumps, they 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:57.119 were a statistician's dream. So this seems like one of 0:22:57.160 --> 0:22:59.960 those cases of people who thought they were doing science 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:03.120 tific research but may well have been letting their theories 0:23:03.160 --> 0:23:09.080 be overdetermined by attraction to the specific practical and esthetic 0:23:09.160 --> 0:23:13.080 aspects of objects that they just wanted to study. Maybe 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:15.520