Phrenology was a hot topic in 1830s America, the relatively new “offspring of inquiring and revolutionary age,” as the Quarterly Christian Spectator called it in 1834. It was hailed by some as a science that could unlock the secrets of the human brain by measuring the skull. It was denounced by others as sheer hucksterism – the work of con-men using the dubious notion of “cranial bumps” to make money off the gullibility of others.