Description:

Spurzheim Johann

4” x 2.625” watermarked paper slip inscribed and signed by German physician Johann Spurzheim as “Spurzheim” at lower right. In very good condition with expected paper folds. Minor soiling at bottom recto, as well as pencil figures and paper roughness verso, do not affect the inscription or signature.

 

In this undated prescription marked with the universal “Rx” symbol in its upper left corner, doctor Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1786-1832), writes an order in French for “Six pills of which each contain two grains of quinine sulfate”. Quinine, derived from the bark of the chinchona tree, was first isolated in 1820, although it had been used to treat parasitically transmitted diseases like malaria since the seventeenth century.

 

In addition to doctoring, Johann Spurzheim was the protege of Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1838), the founder of the study of phrenology. Gall, Spurzheim, and other early phrenologists believed that the brain housed certain functions in specific centers, and that physical factors like the size, shape, and weight of the brain, along with the sex and race of the specimen, directly correlated with that person’s intelligence, inclination, or dysfunction. Although today it is relegated to the status of a pseudoscience, phrenology was an extremely popular field of study at its peak between 1810-1840.

 

Gall and Spurzheim became estranged in 1812, after which point Spurzheim undertook his own studies. Spurzheim developed “charts” or graphically pleasing busts mapping different brain centers, that made phrenology more accessible to the average layman. Like Scottish barrister turned avid phrenology acolyte George Combe (1788-1858), Spurzheim traveled throughout Europe and the United States lecturing and writing about phrenology. If Spurzheim had not died prematurely in Boston of typhoid, the two might have collaborated in applying phrenology to the treatment of mental illness and other social issues.

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