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The
"First Family"
of Phrenology
by Peggy M. Baker,
Director & Librarian
Pilgrim Society & Pilgrim Hall Museum |
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As
part of an exhibition at Pilgrim Hall Museum
In Sickness & In Health : Medicine in the Old Colony Medicine in the Old Colony |
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sponsored by
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The 19th century
was a time of “do-it-yourself medicine.”
With human science still in its infancy and with bleeding and
blistering the mildest “remedies” available to physicians, it took
little to persuade the public that, with a little common sense, they could
do as least as well on their own.
Alternative
therapies, largely based on wishful thinking and an unclear grasp of
physiology, became enormously popular.
Most of these alternative medicines died a natural death as genuine
medical advances caught up with the expectations of the public.
The free-for-all that was America in the 1800s, however, led to
some remarkably creative “medical” theories.
Among them was phrenology.
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