Mark Twain, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the Head Readers

‘The book contains valuable additions to knowledge … This carefully researched, meticulously documented study will be of interest to students of literary and cultural history as well as to scholars of the history of science … Highly recommended.’ J. D. Vann, Choice‘Finger delivers a bicycle tour of phrenology, its bizarre methodology, the arcane terms invented by its practitioners, and the flaps that beset it. His expertise in neurology enables him to offer unusual observations. Combining information on three topics - Mark Twain, Holmes, and the history of phrenology - his book energetically examines connections that remind cultural historians how easily pseudoscientific movements can mislead the populace.’ Alan Gribben, American Literary Realism

Stanley Finger is Professor Emeritus of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, USA. He has published more than 250 articles and twenty-two books, including Origins of Neuroscience (1994), Minds Behind the Brain (2000), The Shocking History of Electric Fishes (2011), and Franz Joseph Gall (2019). He edited the Journal of the History of Neurosciences for twenty years.