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July 16,
1849. Whitman visits the busy
phrenological emporium of Fowler and Wells to literally have his head
examined. A nineteenth-century
“science” that has long been discredited, phrenology sought to identify
traits of character by the bumps and depressions on a human skull, with each
area corresponding to a particular trait such as conscientiousness,
destructiveness, mirthfulness, intellectual faculties, benevolence, and so
forth. Whitman’s analysis pleased him
so much that he reprinted parts of it in several editions of Leaves of
Grass: This man has a grand physical construction, and power to live to a
good old age. He is undoubtedly
descended from the soundest and hardiest stock. Size of head large. Leading traits of character appear to be
Friendship, Sympathy, Sublimity and Self-Esteem, and markedly among his
combinations the dangerous faults of Indolence, a tendency to the pleasure of
Voluptuousness and Alimentiveness, and a certain reckless swing of animal
will, too unmindful, probably, of the conviction of others.
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