Johann Spurzheim

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Johann Spurzheim

Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (born December 31, 1776 in Longuich near Trier , † November 10, 1832 in Boston , Massachusetts ) was a German doctor and phrenologist .

Early life

He was the son of the Protestant farmer Johann Spurzheim, from whom he got his first name. After Johann G. Spurzheim had learned Latin and Greek in the school in his home village, he began to study theology , philosophy and Hebrew at the University of Trier because his father wanted to see him in a spiritual position. But when the French army in 1799 arrived in his home country, he fled to Vienna to there medicine to study.

Phrenology and Later Life

In 1800 he first met Franz Joseph Gall , the founder of phrenology, whose private lectures on skull and organ theory he attended and with whom he worked for the next 13 years. In order to finance his studies, which he did until 1804 but did not finish until 1813, he taught as a tutor to rich families until he became Gall's secretary and assistant in 1805. He accompanied him from 1805 to 1807 to Germany , Switzerland , the Netherlands and France . Since the run by Gall topologically oriented teaching, according to Emperor Francis II of the principles of morality and religion to stride seemed Johann G. Spurzheimer and Gall were urged in 1808 by Paris emigrate to there continue their work.

In 1810 Gall published his first volume on phrenology, in which Spurzheim, who supported Gall with comments and notes, is also listed.

During the second volume in 1813 they broke off their collaboration for reasons that were not clear and Spurzheim only traveled to Vienna afterwards to take his degree in medicine, and then to London in March 1814 .

In 1815 he published his first own book, Drs. Gall and Spurzheim's physiognomical system , for which he was dismissed as a quack in the widely read and respected Whig Edinburgh Review. Spurzheim also received criticism from the anatomist John Gordon (1786-1818), before he carried out a public autopsy with him in Edinburgh in 1816 , during which he was able to prove his theses. In 1818 he married a French widow who died in the winter of 1829.

In 1825 he returned to London, wrote a few works until the death of his wife and took part in the discussion on phrenology. He then traveled to Paris, Belfast , Dublin and, most recently, to the United States in 1832 , where he made a successful lecture tour.

Grave in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Spurzheim fell ill with typhus and died on November 10, 1832 in Boston , Massachusetts .

Works

In collaboration with J. Gall:

  • Phrenology: or the doctrine of the mental phenomena (1809)
  • Recherches sur le système nerveux en général, et sur celui du cerveau en particulier (1809)
  • Des dispositions innées de l'âme et de l'esprit: du matérialisme, du fatalisme et de la liberté morale, avec des réflexions sur l'éducation et sur la législation criminelle (1810)

Alone:

  • Observations sur la folie ou Sur les dérangements des fonctions morales et intellectuelles de l'homme (1818)
  • Outlines of Phrenology; being also a manual of reference for the marked busts (1827)
  • Manuel de phrénologie (1832)

literature

Web links

Commons : Johann Spurzheim  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sigrid Oehler-Klein: Spurzheim, Johann Kaspar. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1352.
personal data
SURNAME Spurzheim, Johann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spurzheim, Johann Gaspar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1776
PLACE OF BIRTH Longuich , Germany
DATE OF DEATH November 10, 1832
Place of death Boston , United States