The reception of Gall’s organology in early-nineteenth-century Vilnius

ABSTRACT

Much has been written about the development and reception of Franz Joseph Gall’s (1758–1828) ideas in Western Europe. There has been little coverage, however, of how his Schädellehre or organology was received in Eastern Europe. With this in mind, we examined the transmission and acceptance/rejection of Gall’s doctrine in Vilnius (now Lithuania). We shall focus on what two prominent professors at Vilnius University felt about organology. The first of these men was Andrew Sniadecki (1768–1838), who published an article on Gall’s system in the journal Dziennik Wileński in 1805. The second is his contemporary, Joseph Frank (1771–1842), who wrote about the doctrine in his memoirs and published an article on phrenology in the journal Bibliotheca Italiana in 1839. Both Frank and Sniadecki had previously worked in Vienna’s hospitals, where they became acquainted with Gall and his system, but they formed different opinions. Sniadecki explained the doctrine not only to students and doctors but also to the general public in Vilnius, believing the new science had merit. Frank, in contrast, attempted to prove the futility of cranioscopy. Briefer mention will be made of the assessments of Johann Peter Frank (1745–1821) and Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776–1827), two other physicians who overlapped Gall in Vienna and went to Vilnius afterward. Additionally, we shall bring up how a rich collection of human skulls was used for teaching purposes at Vilnius University, and how students were encouraged to mark the organs on crania using Gall’s system. Though organology in Vilnius, as in many other places, was always controversial, it was taught at the university, accepted by many medical professionals, and discussed by an inquisitive public.

KEYWORDS:

• Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus
• Johann Peter Frank
• Joseph Frank
• Franz Joseph Gall
• organology
• Andrew Sniadecki
• Vilnius University

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Arleta Bublevič for her assistance in translating the article by Andrew Sniadecki from Polish and Lorenzo Lorusso for his help in translating Joseph Frank’s Italian essays.

Notes

¹ Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776–1832) was the second author on the first two volumes and the atlas. A less expensive edition (without the atlas) bearing only Gall’s name appeared between 1822–1825, and this edition was translated into English in 1835 (Gall, 1822–1825, 1835).

² Spurzheim popularized the term phrenology, which Gall detested, but Spurzheim did not coin it when he first used it in print in 1818 (Spurzheim, 1818). Its origin can be traced to Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush (1745–1813), who employed it in two medical school lectures published in 1811 (Rush, 1811a, 1811b; Noel & Carlson, 1970). Four years later, it was used by British physician Thomas Forster (1789–1860), a friend of Spurzheim (Forster, 1815).

³ Even in the beginning of the nineteenth century, Vilnius remained a multinational city: “More than 35 000 people, of whom 22 000 Catholics, 600 Greeks, 500 Lutherans, 100 Protestant Reformers, 11 000 Jews, and 60 Mohammedans, lived in Vilnius” in 1804, can be read in the memoirs of Joseph Frank (Frankas, 2013, p. 51).

⁴ Plica polonica, a tuft of matted, felted and filthy hair, is a phenomenon that was often considered an affliction confined exclusively to Poland and Lithuania. It had been thought to be a punishment from God, which could not be disposed of simply by cutting off one’s hair, as this could lead to serious complications and even the patient’s death (see Klajumaitė, 2013). Plica polonica was believed to be associated with number of other pathologies: diseases of brain, spinal cord, nerves, diseases of bones, cartilages, tendons, muscles, membranes, blood vessels, heart, lung, skin and other visceral organs (see Kaczkowski, 1821).

⁵ Gall’s doctrine would guide Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud (1796–1881) and Paul Broca (1824–1880) to their breakthroughs in clinical-pathological studies on speech, which would show more convincingly that the human cortex is not functionally uniform. The new localizationists, however, would reject Gall’s skull-based localizations.

⁶ Joseph Frank wrote about his practice in General Hospital of Vienna: ”Four senior physicians worked at the hospital; each of them treated a hundred and fifty, and in winter time – hundred and eighty patients” (Frankas, 2015, p. 299).

⁷ According to Birutė Railienė (2005), Sniadecki stayed at Professor Johann Peter Frank‘s apartment during this period.

⁸ This might seem unusual, but it is worth remembering that women also attended Gall’s lectures in Vienna, Germany, and France.

⁹ In the middle of the nineteenth century, there were only about 35% Lithuanian-speaking inhabitants in Vilnius Governorate of the Russian Empire (Bairašauskaitė, Medišauskienė, & Miknys, 2011, p. 108)

¹⁰ “Brunonian medicine” was based on the notion that the human organism possesses a reasonable amount of natural energy or excitability, which, if diminished, is capable of restoration to a healthy balance with proper stimulation, and, if excessive, is capable of being lowered. Brown contended that there are no specific cures for particular diseases and that his medical treatments targeted the whole body by changing its excitability, thus correcting the signs and symptoms of sthenia or asthenia (see Brown, 1788; Risse, 1988).

¹¹ This is a Latin translation of the Hippocratic aphorism, which translates as “Art is long, life is short.”

¹² Whether his negative attitude might have had something to do with the fact that he had been a follower of John Brown but then lost faith in Brunonian system, making him more reluctant to follow another faddish idea into uncharted waters, takes us beyond the written material at hand. What is not speculative is that Frank chose to play it safe, reverting back to “time-tested” Hippocratic medicine, common sense, and experience-based observations for his teaching and clinical practice.

¹³ The Lithuanian press ban was a ban on all Lithuanian language publications printed in Latin letters from 1865 until 1904; however, Lithuanian language publications that used Cyrillic were allowed (Šapoka, 1936).