Vienna Museum of Technology

In our free time after our tour at the Museum of Technology I found a section that was particularly interesting to me.  This section focused on the body, its functions, and the evolution of our understanding of the human body.  There were several displays of human figures that revealed the inside of the body with descriptions of its functioning. Though this whole section was very interesting to me, I was particularly interested in the display on the Phrenology of the Brain.  From one of my psychology classes I knew that a physician named Franz Joseph Gall labelled/sorted different areas of the brain into different specialized functions.  This is known as Phrenology of the Brain.  The image shown is an example of his localized labels, a concept that is no longer followed in the field of psychology today.  I learned a lot more about Phrenology from this display.  I learned that Phrenology was originally named Organology.  This label was given because he identified 27 different "organs" of the brain- each with a different function.  I learned that Gall believed different mental illnesses came from damages to each of these different sections of the brain.  I also learned that Gall's work only became known because of Gustav Scheve.  In the 1840's Scheve widely spread the discipline of phrenology.  Furthermore and lastly, I learned that Scheve actually got into trouble with the government for publishing a work called Katechismus der Phrenologie which connected psychology, medicine, education, and religion all in one work.  This was a very interesting display, and a great addition to the Museum of Technology in Vienna, Austria.