Mummies in the Pseudosciences

One of the more unusual groups interested in mummy physiognomy were the phrenologists, who believed that bumps and patterns on the skull revealed character traits of their owners.  As early as 1851 Fowler and Wells were advertising their Phrenological Cabinet at Clinton Hall, 131 Nassau Street, New York, wherein they had “Skulls and casts from the heads of the most distinguished men that ever lived; also skulls …from all quarters of the globe—including Egyptian mummies, pirates, robbers, murders and thieves …” Admission was free, and if one wished, one could also have a phrenological examination and a chart made, as well as a written description of character based on the consultation, although those services required payment.

Phrenology is a pseudoscience  which primarily focused on measurements of the human skull, based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions or modules.

Although now regarded as an amalgamation of primitive neuroanatomy with moral philosophy, phrenological thinking was influential in  the 19th-century psychiatric movement. There was an assumption from the study of the crania that character, thoughts, and emotions were located in specific parts of the brain. This science of neuropsychology is an historical advance from this more primitive origins.

Anatomical Museums were "scientific" institutions which featured exhibitions of male and female anatomy (in particular reproductive organs) as well as such gruesome curiosities as models of and preserved organs deformed by sexually transmitted diseases, malformed fetuses and other anatomical oddities. They were designed "for men only" and many were operated in conjunction with a "doctor" who claimed to cure venereal diseases, masturbation, and "seminal weakness." The Pacific Museum of Anatomy and Science also boasted five mummies (other museums had "natural history collections" as well), the gift of a certain Capt. Grant (not to be confused with Alexander Grant who had found Captain Larkin Thorndike Lee's mummy.)