A practical demonstration of Phrenology

At the close of the lecture the chairman commented on a few of the salient points of the address, and then asked Miss Fowler to give a practical demonstration of Phrenology.

Miss Fowler said she would call upon Mr. Joseph Salomonson to step on the platform and to allow her to introduce him to the members and friends of the Institute. She had had the pleasure of examining his head in her private office, and found several very interesting features in his character. They are as follows:

You possess a remarkable organization for health, and are capable of generating an unusual degree of vitality. Nature gave you a good start to begin with, and you have evidently improved your opportunities for sustaining your constitutional strength. You should make an excellent advocate for the carrying out of commonsense principles in life. Your personality should influence others to abstain from the unnecessary restraints of conventional life, and speak volumes for a more simple mode of sustaining one’s constitution. You should, therefore, be able to preach effectively the gospel of sanitation and right living. There are several points in your Phrenological developments that indicate what we now say concerning you. For instance:

There is great originality in your character, and you will show all through your life a singular power to work out your own ends. Your conscience and your reason work together; consequently you will not care so much what other men think or do, provided you have liberty to carry out your own views in life. Your moral brain, together with your intellectual capacity, invite your mind very strongly to live along intellectual lines, and your ability to think for yourself. Your progrcssive or reformatory spirit will always place you in the band of great thinkers. Your mind is largely nourished by the food you eat and the life you live. There is no chance for disease to get hold of you. Your circulation is perfect, and your general condition is far above the average; in fact, you have no adipose tissue to get in your way, and the physical fibers and the tone of your physical instincts help your mind to think clearly. Your intellect is an active one, and we should expect to find in your case power in several directions.

One is that you do not care to engage in small lines of work. You have large plans before you. You take in the whole world in your heart, or more scientifically speaking, into your interests. You would like to create new thoughts of life for the people you see around you. You would like to convince persons of their errors. Your philanthropic spirit enters into all you do. It makes you a Christ among men. It gives you a strong redeeming feature, which has all the reforms from early ages down to the present day.

We do not think you will be a man to live alone, but would rather be in touch with civilization, where you can handle or influence men.

It will take you many years to enlarge and unfold the many plans that you have in your mind’s eye to do, and it will be necessary for you to be patient with people to enable them to see the advanced ideas you possess.

You ought to make an eloquent speaker, for you have two characteristics that always unite themselves in a foreible orator.

(1) One is that you are alive all over in the subject to which you give yourself.

(2) You have a power to condense what you have in mind to say in a few words; therefore you ought to be able to clinch the attention of others, and in ten minutes or a quarter of an hour you could say more than many persons who take three-quarters of an hour to explain what might have been said in ten minutes.

Continuity is a small organ in your head, but you are able to carry out a definite and prolonged line of thought, when you give yourself to any work, with considerable steadfastness, though continuity is constantly urging you on to new conquests, as Alexander said in regard to his work.

Were it not for your large Firmness you would dissipate your strength more than you do, and you would find yourself passing from one phase to another without following out any line of thought. As it is your active Firmness enables you to stick to a purpose, persevere with an object, or even overcome the greatest opposition.

You were born to exercise a decided influence over your fellow-men, and ought to carry out some fixed principles of thought.

You are an executive man, and do not mind how much labor you pass through or undertake, so long as you feel ready for the task. You ought to write out your thoughts one of these days, if you have not already begun to do so, for you have literary talent, and if you will get the help of a stenographer, you will be able to cover much ground, and condense your thought more quickly than as if you tried to elaborate your thoughts with your own labor.

You are a keen student of Human Nature. Your capacity to understand character is far above the average. You ought to be able to understand your fellow men quite well, and with Phrenology as a guide you will find that it will give you a basis for your sizing up of men, and in judging what their characteristics are, and when you trust to your intuitive judgment rather than to your sympathies, you will not make a mistake in your estimate of others.

Sublimity being so strongly developed, you cannot pin yourself down to a small program, and were you not healthy in organization and every fiber and nerve of your body, you would become worn out with the work you give yourself to do.

You are not wanting in ingenuity, and we judge that you will use your executive and ingenious qualities in working out new ideas rather than in a mechanical direction.

You like to perfect everything that you do. You like everything to be perfect of its kind. You like to deal with the best material, whatever it is. You hate shoddy from the bottom of your heart. Anything that is artificial has the same effect, and on this account you will be true to your principles and motives, and will endure everything that you realize is true. You are not carried away by large hopes, nor do you leave things for Providence to settle. You attend to your own business yourself.

The spark of Divinity in you is always burning, and it is a live ember. You could never feel very far from the Divinity that comes to you from a higher source; in fact, you are very conscious of superior help and guidance, and this helps you to be stronger in carrying out your views of life, for you realize that you have a Divine source to draw upon.

Benevolence, Conscientiousness, Firmness, and Causality are some of your strongest mental powers, and these united give you more than ordinary zest, earnestness, philanthropic spirit, intensity of mind, indomitable will, and persevering spirit, and ability to generate new thoughts and plans of work.

You cannot follow another master. You are your own guide, and while you are not proud or vain in spirit, yet you must be known for your great independence of thought, which predominates over your whole life.

One more feature of your character should be mentioned, and that is your friendliness toward others. You look upon mankind as belonging to one great family, and your fellow men as brothers. Friendship and Philoprogenitiveness give you, to a large extent, this element of friendliness, and you will always remain true to the friendships you have made; in fact, you have a constancy of attachment that does not allow you to forget the friendships you have formed in early life. You can adapt yourself to many phases of character, and when traveling you know how to make yourself at home, and make others feel at home with yourself.

Though you have your own methods of life you are not an imitator of your fellowmen. These are some of the salient points that you recognize in your character. We could go along and elaborate many points which your head indicates, but these will serve to show where the power of your character lies.

You should become a reformer in the truest sense of the term, and an organizer among men, a writer of original views, living out your own ideas.

She then asked Mr. Salomonson to explain some of his views concerning the best method of preserving health. He said in part as follows:

HOW TO LIVE ACCORDING TO NATURE

Ladies and Gentlemen: I will ask you the question, What do we live for, and answer it by saying, Do we not desire to make the most of life, and in order to do so ought not our object to be to live as near to Nature as possible? This is my conception of our responsibility to our Creator. Up to within four years ago I used to enjoy what I considered then some very good things to eat, very good dinners, in fact, but at that time I had very little time to think, as I was a busy man, and ate all the things that were placed before me. I was then filling a position of merchant and consul in India. Since then, during the past four years, I have had time to think, and I thought I would try the system that I am about to explain to you. After a month’s trial I was so much taken with the habits I had formed that I decided to continue them. When I went home to Holland a gentleman in Amsterdam said to me, “You are a vegetarian.” I said “What is a vegetarian?” I found that the so-called vegetarian was one who abstained from eating meat. “Oh,” said I to my friend, “I am no vegetarian, for I do not touch any animal products, such as milk, butter, or eggs, and prefer raw food. I do not take anything that pertains to the cow or sheep, while your vegetarian believes only that it is not right to kill.”

I find that by taking the raw carrots, raw turnip, raw onions, and fruit, I now have no thirst, and I have come to believe that thirst is artificial, and that it only accompanies cooked food when salt is put into it, but the natural life does not demand drink. I have not drank any water, tea, coffee, or spirits of any kind, since September, 1901, when I was in Switzerland, and I find I have lost forty pounds, but have now a pure human body. A gentleman came to me who had been to many doctors who had failed to cure him. He said to me, “Can you do anything for me.” I said, “I think I can help you if you are willing to do as I tell you.” “Well.”said he, “there is one thing you must not tell me to do, that is to give up meat.” “Oh,” I said, “if you wish to go on eating meat, you must go back to your doctors and your drugs. I cannot do anything for you.”

All men are alike, and all sicknesses are alike, the only difference is in form. The hundred diseases come from the same source, a degenerate stomach, degenerate kidneys, degenerate liver, through thousands of years. Science does not know the needs of the natural man, because doctors have only had unnatural bodies to look at and examine inside and out. Degenerate, I say, through the eating of improper food. I could not be sick or have a fever, because I have not the conditions for fever to thrive in. I will tell you why: If you plant a banana or a cocoanut tree here you would get no bananas or cocoanuts, for the soil is not suitable. Sickness only comes where there is the proper soil for it.

Then there are social questions to con- sider. One should sleep on the ground, for the ground is much healthier than conven- tional beds. Of course I would not advise meat-eaters to begin at once to sleep on the ground, for they are not prepared for such a change. I have a very different idea of happiness from what I had four years ago. Now I wear no stockings, no boots, no hats, no col- lars, no gloves. I never trouble a barber or a butcher, and $250 is sufficient for me to live on, for I wear very little clothing, and believe people injure themselves by carrying about so many garments.

HERE THE MEETING WAS THROWN OPEN TO QUESTIONS. Dr. Walter asked: “How much life is there in the raw carrot? “I don’t know ex- actly, for science does not know, but there is more than in the same proportion of meat, and it is purer. I have read recently that a German professor placed a high value on potatoes, while formerly we thought but lit- tle of them. A lady asked: “Do you sleep on the ground when there is thirty degrees of frost?” “Oh, yes; but I would not advise any meat-eaters to follow my example, for they are not ready to do so.” One gentleman asked: “How many meals a day do you eat?” “Generally two, at eleven and six o’clock, but I never eat un- less I feel to need food. As a rule, people eat too much, and do not give themselves time to digest what they eat. There is order in Nature, and I believe in following her as much as possible.” The next question was: “Do you eat nuts?” “Oh, yes, there is a great nourish- ment in nuts, and they are only indigestible when they are eaten after a heavy meal. They are a food in themselves.” “Do you get along without taking any water to drink?” “No, I need no water, the juice of fruit is all my system needs, water contains many impurities, so does a whisky soda.” “What do you feed a baby on,” asked Mr. Streever. “The mother’s milk is the best food for a baby, although it is liable to partake of the impurities of the mother’s mode of eating. If the baby cannot be nourished on its mother’s milk, the best thing to give it is the warm juice of boiled wheat, apples, etc. Another question was: “Can you do a good day’s work on the food you eat?” “Yes, I can work better on natural food than on what I used to eat. I sometimes eat steamed vegetables, but never put any salt in them; Nature has provided enough salt, without there being any necessity for the addition of any other. Mineral salt makes all the evils in the world. As a proof that men can work on the natural food, many laborers in my own country (Holland) live entirely upon it.” Dr. Brandenburg thanked the speakers for their addresses, and said he had followed out many of the suggestions just made, and could testify to the benefit of a natural diet. The broad head naturally cared for carniv- orous, and the narrow head for herbivorous food. The Polar bear chose a very different diet from the bear in India, the latter liv- ing on fruit, the former on meat. The eyes of the fruit-eaters were much brighter than those of the meat-eaters. The next lecture will be given on April 5th by Charles H. Shepard, M.D., whose sub- ject will be “How to Reach the Century Marks.” Miss Fowler expects to examine some octogenarians. The chair will be taken by Dr. Brandenburg.

The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health, 117. Jahrg., April 1904, Nr. 4, S. 126-130. Online