Travels in phrenologasto

London: Saunders and Otley, 1829. SECOND EDITION. Full contemporary calf, boards outlined in gilt, title and year in gilt on spine, paste-downs, fly-leaves and edges marbled. An absolutely exquisite, wide-margined copy. Second edition, apparently preceded by an 1825 printing from Calcutta, India. A fascinating, crazy story bordering science fiction and fact. Cranioscopy (literally skull observation) was coined by the German physician Franz Gall who pioneered the study of localized brain functions. It was replaced by the term phrenology coined in 1805 by an American physician to mean “science of the mind.” In this wonderful story, the narrator makes a fantastic balloon journey from London and awakes in an inverted country, where the citizens wear necklaces of skulls and have their own skulls mapped out with phrenological markings. The traveler learns that the country is called Phrenologasto, as a culture defined by phrenology, and that its capital (head) city is called Cranioscoposco, echoing Gall’s original title for his science. The inhabitants of Phrenologasto carry animated charts of their own faculties. As they are Italians long severed from their native land, Travels may be deemed a Lost Race tale.

The end of the nineteenth century saw considerable discussion regarding connections between phrenological development and predisposition to criminal behavior. Books by Cesar Lombroso and others point out the anatomical and other evidence of prisoners to support their position that shape of the head and other facial features can lead first to tattoos and then to a life of crime.

Balscopo is the pseudonym of John Trotter (1788-1852). Despite not being specifically identified, he is (ostensibly) the translator of the manuscript which was originally written in Italian. In the preface to Travels, he claims to have been given Balscopo’s manuscript in Bavaria.