ABSTRACT
Much has been written about the development and reception of Franz Joseph Gall’s (1758–1828) ideas in Western Europe. There has been little coverage, however, of how his Schädellehre or organology was received in Eastern Europe. With this in mind, we examined the transmission and acceptance/rejection of Gall’s doctrine in Vilnius (now Lithuania). We shall focus on what two prominent professors at Vilnius University felt about organology. The first of these men was Andrew Sniadecki (1768–1838), who published an article on Gall’s system in the journal Dziennik Wileński in 1805. The second is his contemporary, Joseph Frank (1771–1842), who wrote about the doctrine in his memoirs and published an article on phrenology in the journal Bibliotheca Italiana in 1839. Both Frank and Sniadecki had previously worked in Vienna’s hospitals, where they became acquainted with Gall and his system, but they formed different opinions. Sniadecki explained the doctrine not only to students and doctors but also to the general public in Vilnius, believing the new science had merit. Frank, in contrast, attempted to prove the futility of cranioscopy. Briefer mention will be made of the assessments of Johann Peter Frank (1745–1821) and Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776– 1827), two other physicians who overlapped Gall in Vienna and went to Vilnius afterward. Additionally, we shall bring up how a rich collection of human skulls was used for teaching purposes at Vilnius University, and how students were encouraged to mark the organs on crania using Gall’s system. Though organology in Vilnius, as in many other places, was always controversial, it was taught at the university, accepted by many medical professionals, and discussed by an inquisitive public.
In 1798, Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828), who had remained in Vienna after obtaining his medical degree, wrote a formal letter to the public censor, Joseph Friedrich Freiherr von Retzer (1754–1824), outlining his nascent theory of organology (Gall, 1798). Gall contended that there are many independent faculties of mind and that small territories of the cortex provide the necessary instruments for our propensities, ways of thinking, and character traits. These territories, he explained, could be discerned by correlating cranial features with exceptional behaviors or deficiencies: his so-called system of bumps. Some of his contemporaries agreed with his notions, while others considered his ideas about the mind to be materialistic, scandalous, or unsubstantiated and antireligious (e.g., Walther, 1802; Bischoff, 1805).
Much has been written about the development, dissemination, and reception of Gall’s doctrine, especially after his landmark, five-volume Anatomie et Physiologie du Système Nerveux en Général, et du Cerveau en Particulier [Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General and of the Brain in Particular] was published in Paris during the second decade of the nineteenth century (Gall & Spurzheim, 1810–1819).1 Nonetheless, the more widely disseminated reviews have been almost (if not entirely) about what transpired in Western Europe and the United States (e.g., Temkin, 1947; Davies, 1955; Ackerknecht, 1958; Young, 1970), especially his organology’s transformation into “phrenology”2 and the debates it generated in Great Britain (e.g., Cooter, 1984; Van Wyhe, 2002, 2004, 2007). How the doctrine fared in Eastern Europe has for too long gone virtually unnoticed, although it too should be a part of its history (see Strojnowski, 1965).
The aim of this article is to examine the reception of organology in Vilnius, the capital city of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania until 1795 and the center of Vilnius Governorate of the Russian Empire during the nineteenth century. In particular, our focus will be on Vilnius University, which was one of the most important institutions in the eastern region of scientific Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century. To this end, after some opening comments about Vilnius and its university, we shall analyze an article by physician Andrew Sniadecki (1768–1838), his Krótki Wykład Systematu Galla z przyłączeniem niektórych uwag nad iego Nauką [Short Lecture on the System of Gall with some Comments about his Science]. This paper was written in Polish and was published in 1805 in the journal Dziennik Wileński [Vilnius Daily]. We then shall turn to Joseph Frank’s (1771–1842) Mémoires Biographiques de Jean-Pierre Frank et de Joseph Frank son fils [Biographical Memoirs of Johann Peter Frank and his son Joseph Frank], written in French, and the younger Frank’s article, Della frenologia [On Phrenology], written in Italian and published in Bibliotheca Italiana in 1839. Briefer mention will be made of Joseph’s father’s, Johann Peter Frank (1745–1821), assessment, and that of Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776–1827), yet another physician overlapping Gall in Vienna before heading north to Vilnius. Some concluding remarks about Gall, his system, and “phrenology” in Lithuania and Eastern Europe will follow.
Vilnius University was founded in 1579 by Jesuits in the multinational3 and multiconfessional city of the same name in the Catholic Grand Duchy of Lithuania (for its history, see Bendžius et al., 1977; Bumblauskas et al., 2004). It is one of the oldest and most respected universities in Central and Eastern Europe, its founders were strongly influenced by Renaissance, Reformation, and Counterreformation notions and ideas, and it was modeled after the Jesuit College in Rome and originally had two faculties: philosophy and theology.
1 Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776–1832) was the second author on the first two volumes and the atlas. A less expensive edition (without the atlas) bearing only Gall’s name appeared between 1822–1825, and this edition was translated into English in 1835 (Gall, 1822–1825, 1835).
2 Spurzheim popularized the term phrenology, which Gall detested, but Spurzheim did not coin it when he first used it in print in 1818 (Spurzheim, 1818). Its origin can be traced to Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush (1745–1813), who employed it in two medical school lectures published in 1811 (Rush, 1811a, 1811b; Noel & Carlson, 1970). Four years later, it was used by British physician Thomas Forster (1789–1860), a friend of Spurzheim (Forster, 1815).
3 Even in the beginning of the nineteenth century, Vilnius remained a multinational city: “More than 35 000 people, of whom 22 000 Catholics, 600 Greeks, 500 Lutherans, 100 Protestant Reformers, 11 000 Jews, and 60 Mohammedans, lived in Vilnius” in 1804, can be read in the memoirs of Joseph Frank (Frankas, 2013, p. 51).
After the abolition of the Society of Jesus in 1773, with the papal bull of Clement XIV (1705–1774), Vilnius University came under the jurisdiction of the Educational Commission of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which promoted a new curriculum of civic education and secularism. The Faculty of Medicine was founded during this era, in 1781. Special attention was paid to the promotion of natural sciences in accordance with the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment.
On May 3, 1791, the Constitution of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was approved. Its ideas were then defended against the invading Russian Army during the uprising of 1794. The final partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was carried out a year later. Even after the abolition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the annexation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by the Russian Empire, Vilnius University was able to maintain the same rapid pace of intellectual life, continuing to stimulate the formulation of new ideas in the natural sciences.
Little can be stated with certainty about courses involving the nervous system and its diseases, or about how systems of medicine were taught in Vilnius, before the nineteenth century. What is known is that Jakob Marquart (1583–1658), a doctor of theology, had introduced the basics of human anatomy to philosophy students during the seventeenth century using Andreas Vesalius’ (1514–1564) De humani corporis fabrica (Bogušis, 1997). Also, after the Faculty of Medicine was founded in 1781, Stephanus Bisius (Stephanus Bisio, Bisis Frexonariensis; 1724–1790), a physician of Italian descent, began to lecture on anatomy and physiology, including not only osteology, splanchnology, angiology, and myology but also what would become neurology, this happening between 1781 and 1787 (Biziulevičius, 1997). Bisius, in fact, might have been the first physician in Vilnius to publish an original study on nervous and mental diseases. This work was titled Responsum Stephani Bisii Philosophiae et Medicinae Doctoris ad Amicum Philosophum De Melancholia, Mania et Plica Polonica sciscitantem [A Reply of the Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine Stephanus Bisius to the Question from the Philosophical Society about Melancholia, Mania and Plica Polonica]4 (Bisius, 1772). Additionally (as revealed in the curriculum of 1783–1784), Professor of Surgery Jacques Briôtet (1746–1819) lectured on external head wounds, concussions, subdural and intracerebral extravasations, and trepanation; Professor of Anatomy Joannes Andreas Loebenwein (1758–1820) (as announced in the curriculum of 1787) lectured on the theory of sensibilitas [sensibility]; and an Irish Professor of Therapy, John O‘Connor (1760–1801), lectured through the academic year of 1800–1801 on the inflammatory diseases, including “inflammations of cerebral membranes” (Biziulevičius, 1997).
By the early-nineteenth century, Vilnius University had become the largest in the Russian Empire, based on student numbers and university departments (Bumblauskas et al., 2004). It remained a center of scientific thought and political freedom until it was closed by Russian imperial authorities in 1832, following the suppression of a Polish and Lithuanian uprising during the previous year. It was during this era, which was marked by an increased interest in new biological theories and clinical medicine, that Dr. Joseph Frank, Professor of Special Therapy and Clinical Medicine, and Dr. Andrew Sniadecki (Jędrzej Śniadecki, Andrzej Śniadecki), then Professor of Natural Sciences, as well as Joseph’s father Johann Peter and Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus, lectured at the university.
4 Plica polonica, a tuft of matted, felted and filthy hair, is a phenomenon that was often considered an affliction confined exclusively to Poland and Lithuania. It had been thought to be a punishment from God, which could not be disposed of simply by cutting off one’s hair, as this could lead to serious complications and even the patient’s death (see Klajumaitė, 2013). Plica polonica was believed to be associated with number of other pathologies: diseases of brain, spinal cord, nerves, diseases of bones, cartilages, tendons, muscles, membranes, blood vessels, heart, lung, skin and other visceral organs (see Kaczkowski, 1821).
