Ready for an enlightening journey through the intricate world of 19th-century popular phrenology? Prepare to be captivated as we chat with historian, writer, and heritage consultant, Dr. Alexandra Roginski. Together, we unravel the mysteries of this once-beloved, now discredited science and the profound impact it had on our understanding of the human mind. Along the way, we'll unearth fascinating tales from Australia's phrenology scene, ethical quandaries of modern tech applications, and the puzzling case of Russian 'fat heads'.
As we traverse the history of this intriguing science, we'll explore the complexities of medical pluralism and the gender challenges prevalent in 19th-century medical practices. From the peculiarities of skull shapes to the commodification of Aboriginal remains, Dr. Roginski guides us through a riveting narrative of early cerebral localization. Together, we discover how this now discredited, but once popular, science intersected with ethno-ethnography and anthropology, causing ripples that would change our view of the mind forever.
In the final stretch of our journey, we discuss the rise and pitfalls of the wellness culture, the ethical implications surrounding the commercial use of AI and fMRI machines, and the power dynamics within wellness and spiritual practices. Uncover how wellness gurus pivot from one dodgy dealing to another, the sensationalism surrounding the 'fallen guru', and the dangers of misreading the situations we walk into. Listening to this episode promises to leave you with a newfound perspective, not just on the history of phrenology and wellness culture, but on the human mind itself. So, why wait? Tune in and let's embark on this mind-boggling journey together!
**The above was produced via AI**
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Ready for an enlightening journey through the intricate world of 19th-century popular phrenology? Prepare to be captivated as we chat with historian, writer, and heritage consultant, Dr. Alexandra Roginski. Together, we unravel the mysteries of this once-beloved, now discredited science and the profound impact it had on our understanding of the human mind. Along the way, we'll unearth fascinating tales from Australia's phrenology scene, ethical quandaries of modern tech applications, and the puzzling case of Russian 'fat heads'.
As we traverse the history of this intriguing science, we'll explore the complexities of medical pluralism and the gender challenges prevalent in 19th-century medical practices. From the peculiarities of skull shapes to the commodification of Aboriginal remains, Dr. Roginski guides us through a riveting narrative of early cerebral localization. Together, we discover how this now discredited, but once popular, science intersected with ethno-ethnography and anthropology, causing ripples that would change our view of the mind forever.
In the final stretch of our journey, we discuss the rise and pitfalls of the wellness culture, the ethical implications surrounding the commercial use of AI and fMRI machines, and the power dynamics within wellness and spiritual practices. Uncover how wellness gurus pivot from one dodgy dealing to another, the sensationalism surrounding the 'fallen guru', and the dangers of misreading the situations we walk into. Listening to this episode promises to leave you with a newfound perspective, not just on the history of phrenology and wellness culture, but on the human mind itself. So, why wait? Tune in and let's embark on this mind-boggling journey together!
**The above was produced via AI**
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Undisciplinary is recorded on the unceded lands of the Watarong peoples of the Kulin Nation in Geelong and the Gadigal peoples of the Iroha Nation in Sydney. We pay our respects to Elders, past and present. Welcome to Undisciplinary, a podcast where we're talking across the boundaries of history, ethics and the politics of health, co-hosted by Chris Mays and Jane Williams. Okay, welcome to another episode of Undisciplinary. It is good to be back. It has been a while since our last one. For me, I think, the major, main excuse is I've moved from the research intensive life to the teaching research life and I'm going to read a lot because I need to be able to read the things that I'm teaching people.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's been a wild ride, fun ride, teaching. But, jane, how have you been and what have you been up to?
Speaker 3:Very well, nothing of note.
Speaker 1:I don't have an excuse no. Well, I guess you didn't want to do it on your own, but you are more and more into your own.
Speaker 3:I'm waiting through winter. Yeah well that's right.
Speaker 1:We're in spring now, new dawns, new earlier dawns, I should say.
Speaker 3:Moving along, Chris, moving along. Tell us who we're talking to today.
Speaker 1:We are talking to Dr Alexander Raghinski, who is a historian, writer and heritage consultant based on Maranjuri country in Bullock Beck, Brunswick, who studies ideas and practices of the body in earlier times. She's the author of two books Science Power in the 19th century Tasman World Popular Phrenology in Australia Atara, New Zealand, published by Cambridge in 2022, and the Hanged man and the Body Thief Finding Lives in a Museum Mystery, Monash University, published in 2015. She's published academic journal articles and chapters and written for titles including the Times Literary Supplement, the Australian Book Review and the Age. Alex is a visiting fellow at Deakin University Contemporary History's Research Group and the State Library of New South Wales, and a friend and colleague. Welcome, Alex, Nice to have you along here.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much, chris. It is an absolute pleasure having you know, followed the show and your excellent vibrant conversations. I realised I misled you there, because my new book actually came out a few months ago, in 2023. Yes, so it is as hot off the press as academic publishing ever gets. Yes, it is, and I was fortunate enough to go to be at the launch up in Melbourne.
Speaker 1:So yeah, 2023. So very hot and timely topic on 19th century popular phrenology which I'm looking forward to hearing more about. But before we sort of get into the details of phrenology, it'd be good to hear a bit about your own sort of undisciplinary background or trajectory, such that it is. Maybe you didn't have a securitist journey into this kind of research but went straight from high school straight into phrenology.
Speaker 1:But I suspect it wasn't the case. So it would be really interesting if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and your sort of academic journey and what led you to doing the kind of his and researching the kind of historical questions that you explore in these books.
Speaker 2:Well, you'll be pleased to hear that it was a securtist path for me from high school to phrenology. And, as I have to tell people every time I explain my research at a dinner party, I'm not advocating for knowledge, I don't. I don't think we should be doing it, it's a discredited science. But I do think it is a really great objective study and that's something we can talk about. So I, as every a lot of good high school nerds who are good at the humanities do, I went off and studied arts and law, because, being a migrant child, you can't just do an arts degree, you have to have a profession with it. I didn't finish that, but the law part never really felt yeah, never, never really quite grabbed me. But I was always passionate about writing and communication and sort of midway through my degree I had a really great opportunity to join the age as an editorial assistant. So I worked there for about three and a half years in the newsroom, in working with magazine sections and then also contributing to different parts of the newspaper on a range of topics, and that's where my love of journalism and writing kind of really started to shape up. I then worked in communications so, and specifically in the health and medicine field. So I worked in communications at the Faculty of Medicine, nursing and health sciences at Monash and so working with everybody from people doing basic scientific research through to teaching practical modalities, physiotherapy, medicine, so a kind of broad range of questions and things that people are bringing into action and, through the kind of luck of being on campus, also became aware of the Monash Center for bioethics and, I guess, started thinking about science and health as something that is influenced by social factors as well and became really curious about that. I mean, I come from a family of scientists. My parents are applied scientists. There was always very much a natural part of the conversation. I felt in a way that I was starting to observe it in a different way and became really curious about those processes.
Speaker 2:I then worked for a publishing company that did magazines in science and research and development and while doing that went back to do honors in history because I had a sense that I wanted to be writing long form work, maybe a book, and I wanted to have some kind of disciplinary understanding. And and yeah, when working with some archives at the Faculty of Medicine, I kind of sense that maybe I had this curiosity and historical sensibility. And, yes, I went back to Monash and did effectively in honors year over two years in history and found that it was, yeah, I really love the scholarly rigor of the discipline as well and academia as well, as this opportunity to write and find stories. And in and when it came to picking an honors topic I'd been became really interested in applied practices of history and I guess I've always. That's one current that continues through my work and it was really interesting in the way that for knowledge sorry, not for knowledge history, the history plays a role in museum settings with collections of indigenous ancestral remains effectively.
Speaker 2:So these collections that were gathered during the 19th and 20th centuries that are still held by many museums around the world, including in Australia, and you know the great efforts that had really escalated during the late 20th century to return those remains. But due to poor documentation and you know a range of factors just poor bureaucratic practices within museums and these are remains that are unproven, as the word is. So I thought you know this would be a good project to do and you know a way of applying my skills in in for an end that feels very real and tangible in our country and context and so contacted Museum Victoria and ended up, you know, through a few cul-de-sacs, working with a collection of remains that had been collected by phrenologists in the big 19th century and particularly trying to work out who one of the people in that collection was, a young Aboriginal man identified by a label that just said Jim Crow, executed at. It said mainland, but that part had worn away, so that had been a bit of a red herring. And so trying to work out who this person was so that he could be repatriated. And he was and we did identify him and that information is in my first book, the Hanged man and the Body Thief.
Speaker 2:But while researching, conducting that research, and because through the digitisation of Australian newspapers in the past 20 years we have all of these incredible cultural history resources, I became aware of just how widespread and popular phrenology was in Australia. For, you know, racial reasons, also other reasons tied to self-improvement, self-infantism, curiosity, entertainment you know a range of things and became very curious about that question. So I've ended up at this point in my career with, you know, the multiple strands of research that relate to histories of the body, some in quite, you know, contemporary focus, cultural heritage ways, and then others you know that focus more on the social and cultural history of health and the body, and I've also done some work, you know, in the applied history area worked a little bit in native title and now I'm a heritage consultant, working with built form and places and working within the context of planning and the social interpretation and those you know tensions about how we value history among you know other ways, other questions of how we live in the present.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that overview and, yeah, intricate journey that you've been on, the. Something that sort of struck me, particularly I guess for people you know who may not be familiar with history as a discipline, the way sort of how physical in your sort of, the way that your research was and the way that it's described and where you are now as well, in the kind of work you do with heritage, like the, I think that there can be a sense in the popular imaginary of, you know, historians reading dusty old books you know now they're no longer dusty because they've been digitized but then also dealing with physical remains and trying to connect real connections to the present as well.
Speaker 2:But I have been reflecting a lot, you know, in these different settings, what does a historian bring? And in a sense we are. We do surface the evidence or we interpret the evidence before us. So it's finding it and interpreting it and putting it within its particular context of time. And you know, I'm finding it really exciting at the moment learning how to read buildings, the kind of layers of history that come through in the materiality. But that, yeah, that kind of almost detective instinct, is something that I think we bring.
Speaker 3:I think also that goes the other way as well, right, so historians use the physical to create a history for people to understand, like I'm thinking about the creation of of museums and of museum exhibits and whatever. So using whatever there is to tell a story that works for today's audience, if you like you know. So, there's, there's, there's reading the past and there's also using what you have to create a past, maybe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's as we're all aware. It's highly problematic what gets highlighted, what gets framed in that story, what needs to later be reinterpreted or where the gaps need to be filled in. Because, you know, museum collections are a perfect example of the curation of the past. We do it with buildings as well, like why do we decide to keep particular things at a particular moment? It's a very value laden decision.
Speaker 3:So what? What I really loved listening to you talk about your your journey to here was just the idea of all the amazing rabbit holes that it sounds like you get to go down, which is, honestly, my idea. Was such a good time. So talk to us about phrenology like that. That's a rabbit hole.
Speaker 2:It is a rabbit hole, but you know, I would of course say that maybe it speaks to a broad range of issues. It yeah. So phrenology was a science, a way of understanding human mind, developed at the end of the 18th century by Viennese physician called Franz Josef Gull, and you know this is at a time of intense inquiry into the body, into mind. You know neurobiology, how all fits together. So he devised a theory that started with observing medical students around him and what particular qualities they had. That then translated into studiousness, for example, and basically the system said that the brain pushes against the skull during development. So therefore you can understand the shape of the brain from the shape of the skull, and also that different parts of the brain perform particular functions.
Speaker 2:So an early form is cerebral localization, I think. Why not? He got one or two things correct, but mostly not. But if you think of those, you know phrenological maps or charts of the head that you'll see, you'll get a sense of this abundance of what he called organs. So there's this idea that you can measure and assess someone's character, their intellect, their propensities, from the shape of their head and particular characteristics and, all things being equal, you know if things are in proportion of. Bigger head is the better head. You'd be very, very well served by phrenology, Chris.
Speaker 3:Well.
Speaker 1:I was going to bring that up, but I have, quite you know, pronounced a forehead as well. No, bridge, bridge, not so much the top of the forehead.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know if that was necessarily would be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think that would have any good thing.
Speaker 2:Well, it depends, yeah, I mean, a big forehead was a good thing, but yeah, in proportion to other elements.
Speaker 1:So it's proportional, I guess, is what's needed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and so you're fine, you're fine.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so you know this was debated and contested from the outset but through a kind of process of touring, touring and around, and then the fact that really took off in in the UK, phrenology kind of melded and became a science of self improvement and became incredibly popular. So you might go and learn about it, the local mechanics institution, you might take your kids to be phrenologised, you know, as things became more fanciful it became a way of supposedly scientifically, scientifically, selecting partners. So and it and it travels. If you think of people traveling and knowledge traveling and you know in the settler colonies that interest in what's happening back in Europe, then you know it's not unexpected that it ends up in Australia and in Aotearoa along with the settler colonial process.
Speaker 1:And I just ask and we'll talk maybe more about self improvement in general later but you say that it can be used for self improvement. It would seem that you know a little bit like genes of you know were thought of being fixed, until we sort of thought of epigenetics, like how, if your skull, like what, were people trying to modify the shapes of their skulls? Or you know, or did not what? Like what was the self improvement dimension?
Speaker 2:Because I wouldn't have thought that much could change once you've got yeah, this is that interesting tension between that hard determinism of it and you know the tools that people are picking up, and so Gala originally was much more deterministic about it. He had an organ for murder which then got renamed because you know you wouldn't want to find out that you're prominent in organ for murder it's, it's kind of setting you on a particular.
Speaker 2:It's not. You know there's no room for redemption, so those organs get renamed, so you end up with things like destructiveness and combativeness, which can be negative. But also you know these equalities that might say something else about your character. So the way that it became a tool for self improvement was that it was really a tool for self knowledge and understanding. So if you can understand, you know who you are, your, your essence, where you might be stronger or weaker than you can play to those strengths and you know work on the weaknesses as well. And you particularly see that in the charts that are given to kids or done about kids when parents bring their children in, because I think it speaks to that. You know kind of quite recognizable instinct that you want to give your kids the best opportunity. So this is a tool that you can use to understand your child better, to, yeah, work out those strengths and weaknesses so that you can then work with that, so that you have an understanding.
Speaker 1:You mentioned and I guess we'll talk in a moment about it coming to Australia and the idea of the knowledge travelling. I'm curious as well about the sense of knowledge travelling back to Europe and to Vienna, particularly, I guess, ethnographic and anthropological work done on different groups.
Speaker 1:And we've already talked about my head, so we'll talk about my wife's head perhaps, where she often talks about a funny story. When she was in high school they had some I don't know in what context they had this book, but it was like a history book which then had all the different heads from around the world and she's Russian background and I think there was like a Russian fat head or something like that. And this is what this book I'm not quite sure what purpose it served I mean, she wasn't at school that long ago but it basically was this ethnographic mapping of different shaped heads from around the world, and so her friends, I guess, meanly talked about her head in the light of this ethnographic map.
Speaker 2:Russian fat head.
Speaker 1:Something along those lines. Yeah, she doesn't listen to the podcast anyway, so you know.
Speaker 3:I was actually just going to bring out this weird bump that's on the back of my husband's head and ask what their main purpose is. You know, also doesn't listen to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we can talk about that offline. That's the. You know you have to pay for that service.
Speaker 3:Jay.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, I guess, the point more being about these, yeah, 19th century the, the, the entwinement, I guess, with 19th century sort of ethno ethnography and anthropology and I forgot the name of the guy who was developing this in Vienna and observing his students but was he also bringing in some of that knowledge that was coming in from, you know, the colonies, so to speak?
Speaker 2:You know he was very interested in criminality.
Speaker 2:That was another common fascination.
Speaker 2:But what you see, certainly with the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, which takes off in the early decades of the 19th century and kind of really plugs into colonial networks, is that interest in building up a type collection and so you want to have the reins of people from around the world and in that context Australian Aboriginal remains, amaldia remains become incredibly valuable commodities in a sense.
Speaker 2:There's all kinds of interesting analyses of the hierarchies of scientific practice between people at the centres, you know, so-called centres of empire and on the peripheries, that we're collecting and kind of doing the practical work and sending it back. But there is, yeah, the Aboriginal, the heads of Aboriginal people become these great trophies, which is, you know, this great confounding tragedy today, when you have ancestors in the Smithsonian or other institutions and when you start to realise also that some of this happened, you know, quite recently as well, it's not necessarily that these were ancient remains, they were often the remains of known individuals or named individuals as well. So I guess that's one way in which the colonies, as a kind of biological resource, played into that. And then you do start to see, certainly in terms of the ephemera produced by phrenologists. You know charts with all these comparative types and you've got everyone bundled in there and it's kind of this is your learning resource, from which you can see the different, obviously the different representations.
Speaker 1:Thanks, yeah, so that's interesting to think about the way the knowledge was produced and travelled in those different directions. But then so the practitioners came out to Australia and Tehran, new Zealand, for like what I guess, I'm assuming a variety of reasons. I mean, we'll talk about medical authority and those sorts of things as well, but I assume that it's not just one story. As to you know, they were getting pushed out of Europe so they came to the unregulated landscapes of the no they were able to be happily unregulated back in the UK as well.
Speaker 2:You know, some of the earliest practitioners are colonial doctors. So there is in the early days of phrenology a great uptake by physicians. There's in interpretations of that that say this is a product of physicians kind of occupying this new, unstable social position, so they're attracted to new ideas. It could also just be that people are adapting and looking at new philosophies and technologies that are available to them in their work. But certainly, yeah, it was part of the intelligentsia. I guess you'd say it was an idea that was tested and tried by doctors, by people who were, you know, readers, interested in ideas.
Speaker 2:In the 1850s the Quakers in Tasmania get quite curious about it. So we know about this because there's letters in Tasmanian archives where they're corresponding. Quakers have gone to have phrenological assessments and kind of share their notes about this practice. So it is an idea that's out there, that's, you know, investigated by people who are reading, who are thinking about the natural world, and science was much more participatory in a sense in that time as well. This is really before this establishment and rise of the disciplines. That happens in the second part of the 19th century. So there's that component. And then there's this rise in phrenological lecturing. So scientific lecturing was common entertainment. It's part of this trend towards rational amusement, so getting the masses you know to learn in a way that's fun and accessible and that this is you know a nourishing thing for the community and for the mind.
Speaker 2:And so you know there's all kinds of lectures that happen at this time, but the phrenological lecture emerges in the 1850s as a common form of diversion in your local community or in cities and the people who, although the early I can't even say it at the moment, after all these years, I'm tongue tied.
Speaker 2:Even though the early phrenological lecturers were medical men, increasingly there is this new kind of brand of the phrenological lecturer who is an expert in phrenology and that's a. That is something that really explodes in the mid 19th century here, in the US, in the UK.
Speaker 2:So they become quite a well known form of entertainer and or entertainer slash person of knowledge and they travel. That's their model that they will travel, maybe settle down and establish themselves if the market allows and you know, some people would lecture in addition to other things that they're doing or a more established practice. But it is a very mobile, mobile phenomenon.
Speaker 1:The expertise what's that based on? In the sense of you know even say non, you know non sciences, non, you know debunked sciences there's an expertise to it, like there's an expertise you can be an expert not to get into trouble here with you know, you can be an expert tarot card reader or an expert in astrology. You know that they could do those things more than I could do those things. I don't know about them and, in the sense, like, what's the knowledge and the expertise based on and its relationship to performance, I guess is what.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to get to like so that it seems that there's clearly I would assume that there's a way that people would distinguish whether someone's actually knows what they're doing when they're sort of feeling someone's head, assuming that's what they are doing up there and talking about it. But there's seems that in your sort of writing and talking about this that there is a real performance to it as well, to attract a crowd and to convince a crowd that what's going on here is entertaining.
Speaker 2:Well, chris, for anologist of a certain type would tell you that it is the one true knowledge, and so if you disagree with it, then you're basically rejecting truths in the same way that Galileo is challenged. So you know classic logical fallacy. But that was something that was said in phrenological lectures, where phrenologists were introducing the topic to audiences and trying to explain why you should believe them, even though there was a lot of criticism and humor at the expense of phrenologists as well.
Speaker 1:Sorry, just to interrupt. Sorry about that, but was there also, though, infighting among from like, with some phrenologists be saying that they don't know what they're doing as a phrenologist?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But to return to you know what is the matter of what they're actually selling there? There is a toolbox of skills, there is the head reading, there's the knowledge about the system. So there are a lot of pamphlets and books in circulation about the system and updates to the system as well. So, for example, the Fowler, the American Fowler Empire that really commercialized on a mass scale. They would be adding organs and discovering new organs along the way. My favorite is the organ of bubbutinous, which was the love of liquids. So that could be you know too much or you need to drink more water. You know lots of room for interpretation. So there is that knowledge of the system and then there's the practice of the head reading as well. That's the kind of, that's the content that you're working with.
Speaker 2:I mean, it seems to me that in some of its applications, you know people, some people really studied it and, you know, attained a, you know proficiency and literacy in phrenology when they took it out to the world and then would add their own bits. And you know there were some people who would just maybe learn it from observation and then decide that tonight we're going to do I'm going to be a phrenologist and do a lecture because I've run out of money and that's the thing I can do. So immense kind of variation in that In terms of how you know, how they prove their expertise. That's a really good point, chris, about the coming together for the lecture, because that is, in a sense, you know, if we think of 19th century science as a time when audiences have a greater expectation that they're able to assess things on their merit as well, from observation, from participation in lectures, this becomes a kind of point of experimentation where the phrenologist will be showing the people assembled, the people of the town, what they're, yeah, what they can do, and they might have done this by asking for representatives from the audience and doing a blindfold reading you know, I'm so good, I don't even need to. You know, see, and certainly that's a you know sense excludes you know other things that people might be looking for, other clues to profession and information, and then, through a reading would be demonstrating that they've got an accurate understanding of who this person is before them as well as then giving the audience information about unknown things about this person as well.
Speaker 2:And that's where the kind of entertainment and play would often come in Because I would love to hear that. You know, our friend Chris is actually a born murderer or a criminal of the worst time. You know, it's kind of it's fun and it's jokey and it's got that real like play with power dynamics in that environment. So that was one way that they would test. There was a lot of dress ups as well, so people dressing up and pretending to be from a different class or you know trade, to hide the external markers of who they are and then going to the phrenologist and seeing if the phrenologist is correct. And this is something that Quaker did in Tasmania.
Speaker 3:So sort of trying to be tricky, yeah, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:And then you know there are these tall stories about like, oh, this phrenologist came and the bank had dressed up as a hobo and the phrenologist you know was completely tricked and then had to leave town with his tail between his legs. So yeah, people are part of its interest, or what stimulates the interest is that people aren't sure about it or they think it might be bogus, but you know, they want to see it and try it for themselves as well.
Speaker 1:Do you think, with you know, jumping ahead a little bit, but I mean with that desire to know about ourselves and that sort of playfulness of it and the way people do the Myers Briggs and all these other different sort of personality tests. Well, exactly, buzzfeed quizzes as well. What sitcom dog are you and?
Speaker 2:what do you?
Speaker 1:say about your character.
Speaker 2:The Cosmo-Polytian quizzes, you know, or the Dolly quizzes.
Speaker 3:My people, who also did a RobiXell style See oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think there is this great interest in understanding ourselves, understanding others around us. I mean, this is why these things flourish in workplace settings, why, if phrenologists advertise their skills in surfing selection for example, and why Woolworths was using phrenology or phrenologist in the mid 20th century to select employees.
Speaker 2:There is this sense that you can manage risk of you know, the risk of being around people effectively and their unpredictability through a particular technology or tool. And even if we don't believe in a Myers Briggs test, for example, it's so. It's just so pervasive right that you would still know what someone means if they say I'm an ENTJ, for example, and people use these descriptions of themselves on dating apps, for example. You see, you're trying to like communicate, really, like really essential things in this condensed amount of letters right in space, and so, yeah, I think it's absolutely a persistent thing. And if it's not Myers Briggs, it's biohacking and apps that will, you know, in incredibly GPS ways, tell you your biological age, for example, and who doesn't want to be told they're five years younger than they actually are?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean I think that the interesting examples of, I guess the parallel with the fun of it all, like on the way that we can have that fun, I'd be there is, as you've alluded to, a more sinister or you know, depending on your perspective, a more serious side of it, like with Woolworths using it to select employees, or, you know, the criminal use in criminal contexts. And then also, I'm assuming that the medical authorities at the time, who themselves, I guess we're trying to in the settler, colonial context in this period, we're trying to get themselves established as the sort of legitimate, sort of professional body that could tell people the correct way to understand their health and and control that I am suspecting that they didn't look too fondly upon for knowledge.
Speaker 1:so, even though you did mention that there were some who were for dabbling in on the side. So still, the British Medical Association, I guess, was the controlling body out here at the time in the mid 18th century. Yeah, what was the sort of development of sort of the sciences and medical science as?
Speaker 1:a sort of trying to be professionalized. And I think that, just as I'm rambling on here, because it wasn't until the 1860s, the medical schools were established at Melbourne and Sydney. And then, out of the late yeah I guess, thinking about that period, perhaps towards the end of the 19th century how was having the scientists responded to by the medical community?
Speaker 2:Well, some of them, some of the doctors, were still friends.
Speaker 2:I guess I would say that there's this, you know, struggle for power and authority within a medically plural landscape.
Speaker 2:And the phrenologists were often, you know, the ones who were not necessarily prescribing or offering therapy would have been less objectionable than, for example, people who were doing spiritual healing and really getting involved in treatment, and that's not not to say that for an all just weren't doing that, for example in New Zealand.
Speaker 2:That this is really fascinating person I've been researching called Benjamin strong or Leo Meadow, who was a man of African descent who remade himself in the 1880s as a, a chronological lecturer, and he actually had a lot of multi clients and I know this is at a time of great upheaval and kind of fight for cultural survival in out there and he offered a friend logical herbalism. So he would, you know, combine the friend logical reading, head readings with therapeutic, and then he would have a lot of other applications. And that that came out in an inquest, or the mechanics of how that worked, for example, came out in an inquest, and any of these people try to apply their knowledge or understanding for therapeutic purposes. That it creates this anxiety and tension and then certainly by the 20th century. You see phrenology coming up in these medical malpractice cases and it's not yeah, not as prominent as you would think there's generally other things going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so things like homeopathy were probably getting more of the heat because, of their sort of attempts at the therapeutic side and the phrenologist.
Speaker 2:And that would make sense to me as a. Yeah, from the sidelines.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's interesting to hear about Benjamin strong and also who you talk about, madam, madame sibling in terms of the sort of gender dimension as well to who was quite a little in your description of her, you know, quite a sort of prominent and eminent lecturer in phrenology can you tell us? A little bit about her and maybe some of the differences or challenges with women in the as a lecture in phrenology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, madam sibling, practice this really common combination. One of the things that really happens a lot with phrenology is that it's bundled in with other practices and that, you know, really grows as the 19th century progresses. But she practices phrenology with mesmerism, which we might think of as a precursor to hypnotism which comes out of it, but this idea that you can influence the mind of another through controlling the magnetic fluids that you know float around between us, the ether, if you will.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure you don't work.
Speaker 2:So you bring, you know you can, you can impose yourself in a sense onto the will of that other person using this and that had therapeutic applications. So you know, we're not just we're very interested in mesmerism, but it also becomes a form of stage performance and, combined with phrenology, it is a get. The way it worked was that you would bring someone under and then you would use, you press on different parts of their head and the person would perform that function. You know this, someone in a hypnotic show who's made to run around like a chicken, it's like that, but performing a phrenological functions. So this, this was a form of entertainment that indigenous peoples ended up often participating in, where they would be paid performers to, who would pretend that they were brought under the influence and then would perform particular functions in a way that reflected their culture as well, and that's at a time of this great interest in ethnographic show as well. So, combining all of these different cultural elements and Madame Sibley was a practitioner of mesmerism and phrenology and if you read her the advertisements at the top of her charts you know she will do it all. She'll come to your house, she'll read your kids heads, she'll, you know, give you all kinds of advice on everything. So we see in that the immense adaptability of practitioners. They're really thinking about their target audience and their market. And she but I'm learning more and more about her as I continue to research her travels.
Speaker 2:From the UK she was working class and emigrates to New Zealand with her husband, has multiple children, ends up in southeastern Australia and takes to the stage and she's on the cover of my book in, you know, in quite fabulous attire, very theatrical and that and she becomes incredibly well known. So the lecturing space is more of a man space and that's for a number of reasons. It's it's about who occupies public space in the Australian settler colonies at that time. It's also about the logistics of travel. It was, you know, pretty rough and unsafe to be going to these new settlements. And when the agenda dimension is brought into that, you know, at times he's traveling with a child. Later on her daughter becomes part of her stage show as well. But she she's has to really fight to kind of assert her control of the space and she becomes. So she becomes really well known.
Speaker 2:You know newspapers all over the colonies right about her, in Meribara in 1870 I believe she is in this part of this very unpleasant Masha, where a man she's been living with for three years, who she says is her manager, but he's probably her lover, who's a tailor. He has been physically abusing her and controlling her. She wants to get away from him and so she actually goes to the local court to seek an order of that nature and really is subjected to a lot of unpleasant scrutiny scrutiny humor at her expense in this, in this place, because she's a woman of the Demi Mond, in a sense a person of great fascination, and and succeeds in that legal action only because or partly, I think, because he is really so awful and offends the sensibilities of the local man of the law by writing a letter detailing these really disgusting things about her, and so he kind of breaches these codes of conduction, and so she succeeds in that and is able to get away from him and she continues this pattern of lecturing for a period, then probably, I suspect you know settling back in Melbourne or wherever the her places to you know, look after her many children and becomes quite violent as well after that event. So there are instances where someone will come after her for an uncollected bill and she will want to horse whip them or she will punch someone, and so she is. You know, I'm really curious as to what you know drove that I have, you know, multiple theories about it and then. But she also brings this into her performances, into these lectures of like chaos and disorder, which you know makes great copy, and so I mean that for an hour just did try to do.
Speaker 2:But we see, we see in her life course and she does pretty well for a cell, she marries a, ends up marrying this five ran labor politician and settling with him on a bit of land near parks in New South Wales and sorry, not parks, and think of Henry parks and the tenterfield address, new tenterfield, and yeah, and you know, running a bit of a shop and and things like that.
Speaker 2:And she's, you know the, her position as a matriarch is really core to her identity and that's something that you also see with people like Madame Gherka, who was a religious, diviner, costumier, dressmaker, who was based in the Eastern arcade in Melbourne from the end of the world war one period and who occupied a quite notorious place in the Australian social and cultural landscape. But the more you read about her, the more you understand that she is, you know, there's multiple children, there's multiple employees, she's working across a range of businesses and income streams, in a sense, and the pressures of what you're juggling as a woman doing this, I mean it can be a pathway to liberation, because it's a thing that you can pick up and do and you can, you know, run your own show, and it's definitely much more difficult landscape for female lecturers than it is for men.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's just some fascinating characters. That's been drama, drama. I like JoJo, and you're going to say something.
Speaker 3:I was just wondering if we can like leap well ahead, because the whole time you've been talking, alex, I've been thinking a lot about, about wellness. I guess wellness today. And you know, when you were talking about mobile phrenology earlier, I was thinking, oh, that just sounds like the internet wellness scene which I guess, conversely, is female dominated. Well, or maybe it's just a little bit hard to know because you, if there are male wellness people, I don't know about them, you know. But maybe men do?
Speaker 3:I have no idea, although I just I did see that Russell Brand is a wellness guy who knew.
Speaker 1:Well, Pete Evans would be a wellness guy. He's a wellness guy.
Speaker 3:That's true, okay, so there's probably heaps of them and I don't follow any of them, but a lot of what you have been talking about really resonates right with the, the flexibility and the sort of jack of all trades aspect of it and the performance, I guess, is different, but people are sort of performing it with their own bodies, you know, and the image that they project to people like I'm so well, look at me, be well in my bikini at the beach. But I think there's also a real appetite for wellness gone wrong. So when you were just talking about Madame Sibley and I was thinking about, there was that case last week where some sort of wellness, maybe wellness parenting person it turned out had been abusing her children, which is awful.
Speaker 3:But, it's also a thing that happened somewhere in the US, and I was reading about it in the Sydney Monty Herald, right. So which is is more to suggest that there's there's a kind of appetite for, for failed wellness. Anyway, a ramble from me. What do you say?
Speaker 2:I think that's yeah, that is so interesting, jane.
Speaker 2:I don't know that particular instance, but you know, the thing that springs to mind for me is that those instances of those people dying from taking hallucinogenic recently I can't remember, was it from a frog- I think, so, and this profusion in popular popular culture about the fallen, like, yeah, profusion of TV shows, articles about the fallen guru and the reckoning in yoga in recent years, about these figureheads who were actually, you know, hugely successful, also really abusive and the way that that was built in structurally, you know that is connected to, you know, broader investigations of abuse in religious orders and denominations and the Catholic Church, for example. So there is this sense of what are we? You know, when I try and think about that. You know some of it is just pure sensationalism as well. I don't love a story about the charlatan and that kind of. There's something very unsettling and therefore titillating about people misreading and not understanding that they're walking into danger and that they're giving over to something because there's a promise of it. You know, this is how I try and understand that narrative impulse, right.
Speaker 2:But I think also, you know, capitalist spirituality or new age practices have have, you know, taken a much more prominent role in the, the role of guidance in the community, and so there's a whole rise of people with spiritual but not religious. That's for a range of reasons. So these things have a much more accepted role in our communities and practices. And there is this, you know, I hope. I think that it's better or pure in some ways, and partly that's because there's so much purity discourse in wellness as well, and we, you know, unsurprisingly, are finding that the way that power and authority functions in those institutions is not unlike the way power, authority functions in a range of places as well. So I'm not sure if that depends to your point, jane, but yeah, I find it really interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that the power and authority thing is interesting as well in that there are obviously yeah, as you just pointed out, there are similarities with other institutions, but in some ways and it's not unique to the wellness culture, but it's the charismatic notion of the power that it comes from the person.
Speaker 1:Like this question of authority and expertise, a lot of it rests on them embodying that and being able to convince an audience of that expertise and power, and so it becomes difficult to dispute as well and can be, and it's only perhaps when they fall that that's and that's why everyone piles on. I don't know, but I was just doing a new search for wellness guru because I wanted to see if I could find what the thing Jane was referring to. But I didn't, but I did find some funny. Kate Moss has reinvented herself as a wellness guru and a few news headlines are what does it say?
Speaker 3:It's gardening.
Speaker 1:Yes, kate Moss admits she still smokes, despite reinventing herself as moon bathing wellness guru.
Speaker 3:It is very addictive.
Speaker 2:I think they think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah, the other one that's this I won't read out their name, but this is from Perth news an infamous Perth tree lopper with a long history of dodgy dealings has rebranded himself as a wellness guru. So you know, it seems that it does provide that option to just pivot, as they say, from one dodgy dealing to another today.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I was just going to say.
Speaker 2:I think, if you do a deep dive into wellness land, wellness video land and I did, you know, also participate in a project, research project about conspiracy theories and wellness you know there are a lot of word salads out there and there's a sense that you know, a bit like remaking yourself as a phrenologist if you understand the trappings and the discourse and present and perform that knowledge in a particular way and bring those pieces of information together in a way that seems plausible within the framework of that particular world.
Speaker 2:Right, and, and certainly the social media element, as you pointed out, jane, is a key part of that as well. And so you know women's Q and on aesthetic, and, yeah, the colors and the dress, and yeah, I really love the Conspirituality podcast that comes out of America and they do these great analyses of, you know, wellness and spiritual influences and the kind of spiritual elements, the auditory elements you know people are wearing a lot of jewelry and there's like a, you know, and the sounds that come out of that and yeah, it's a, it's it's reading this, it's setting authority up through understanding the trappings of the world that you're in.
Speaker 3:I'm very excited to check out that podcast. That's new to me and you've made my Wednesday.
Speaker 2:It's excellent. The other great one is decoding the gurus.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that looks at those. Yeah, the arguments that people use and the mechanisms. And you know, in some ways you know in terms of your earlier point, chris, about you know how everyone gets really excited when there's a or not excited, but when the pile on happens, that is all you know that can also help to entrench people and their power base, and that's what we, you know that's been really visible with Andrew Wakefield in the anti vaccination world. It's actually really hard to just launch someone from a position when they're kind of part of their message that they're putting out there is that this is suppressed knowledge and that you know, of course, people are going to want to suppress me. In fact, the fact they're doing this is a sign of the validity, because they're wanting to suppress me like Galileo.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, those rhetorical tools function in really particular ways. And I would say also Jane, you brought up the gender dimension earlier you know a lot of people find other parts that you know, non Western biomedical parts also, because they've had bad experiences with medical practice or had ongoing chronic conditions that they couldn't, you know, find an answer for, and this was partly why, in the 19th century, spiritualists were often women who offered, you know an alternative way and one historian refers to as the gentle way of healing.
Speaker 2:And I'm thinking of some of the things that doctors would do to you back then. You know the idea that that is not the path. You know even now getting to avoid major surgeries, or you know chemical interventions or whatever is required through another modality like there's. You know that makes sense in some ways that people are looking for that in trying to deal with what's happening to their bodies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a great point maybe to sort of close on, which is, I think, and then the sort of sensitivity with which you have done your research and talk about the participants is not to, you know, lampoon them or mock them, but to sort of see them in their social context and in their social history. And I think the point now as well about well, there are certainly these dangers with, you know, Conspiratality or and gurus, the smugness sometimes with which people who are part of the medical establishment or are very much in favor of the medical establishment, of not seeing the harms and the way that this, I guess these histories and these stories can also sort of shine a light on, you know, quote unquote Orthodox medicine and what it has done and been involved with over the years is interesting as well to consider. So thank you very much for being part of this conversation. I feel there are so many more things that I would like to buy if they're machines and facial recognition, I think there's a rebirth of phrenology.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk about that. Yeah, the facial recognition is a great one with the AI and also the fmRI machines. I think are two different ways that there is this rebirth of sort of reading off the physical structure of someone's skull or brain, some kind of behavior and predictive about, you know, criminality or those sorts of things. Do you see those as connected?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and for me and that is the name of a guy at Monash who's doing this stuff, who works with Chow, who our former colleague Chow fan as well- Former guest of the show as well. Former alumna of the show and I will just look his name up because he's doing really interesting stuff about facial recognition. Sorry, bear with.
Speaker 1:This is live research, folks.
Speaker 2:I'm doing my research. Yes, so Chris O'Neill Dr Chris O'Neill at Monash, who works on facial recognition technologies and studying those from a social context perspective, is doing great work on this, as a lot of other people are, because I think what they, you know, a bit like in the differentologists were also, especially in the early days, still doing dissections and looking at the brain like looking at the data. There's this whole black box in between, right of we have the data, but then what are we translating that into? What does it mean? What does it mean when part of the brain lights up more in women or men doesn't mean that, you know, women are crap or in that or does it just mean that their brains don't have to work as hard to perform that particular function, which is one neuro feminist kind of critique? And so there's that aspect.
Speaker 2:And then there's also this thing that I'm particularly interested in, which is the commercial application of such technologies and tools, and what private operators are selling when they say we will come to your workplace or we will come to your company with our technology, whether that's a, you know a computer based technology or a you know a form of psychological profiling or typing, such as the Mice Briggs test and there's a range of others. What is? You know? That is a commercial transaction, and are they? Are they offering a evidence based, rigorous tool In a lot of cases, no or are they just offering a process and the selling point is this particular technology that they are offering, which is what, for knowledges, were doing in the 20th century, when they were offering advice, guidance or employee selections and and calling themselves psychologists as well often.
Speaker 2:But they've got this tool. We're not sure if it works, what it does, but there is an outcome attached to it and there is an exchange of money for that, and so my yeah, I'm always very suspicious of, you know, the validity of tools that are being offered in those contexts for a range of reasons, and I think that you know I'd love to delve into more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the reason for, like the executive and the CEOs and you know we got to publicly the workers got to diagnose their CEOs.
Speaker 2:And so that's the reason.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's usually the other way around. They seem to work.
Speaker 2:I did do a psychological for extensive psychological test for a student job years ago when I was counting money for Armogad.
Speaker 1:And you know, talk about that in your profile.
Speaker 3:I'm sure there's like a low board.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know you're going to this industrial building through various man trap doors person trap, I think you'd say now person trap door and then you might like now a million dollars of cash in a night and put it through machines and enter it and you know it comes in in bags and release. This is how it was done back then and you unpack it and you tell it all up. There's cameras everywhere and part of applying for the job was I did this psychological test that basically asked me in about 20 different ways whether I thought stealing was okay. So it would be. You know all kinds of morality, ethics, stuff and that'd be like if your brother is, you know, really sick, can you steal to buy him?
Speaker 3:Slipping it in.
Speaker 1:Do you think it was right that those little kids were sent off on convict ships because they stole a loaf of bread? Yes, they deserved everything they got.
Speaker 2:The best one was what sum of money do you think it's okay to steal from an employer? $0 to $100, $100 to $1000, $1000 to $10,000.
Speaker 3:None of the above.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great.
Speaker 2:It was phrased in such a like hey, this is just a question like what do you think?
Speaker 1:Just between besties. What do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, really good telling. I think the answers no, I'm pretty sure the answers no.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, it's very nice to know that you're a psychological verified honest person.
Speaker 2:Alex, that's a pop on my CV.
Speaker 1:Well, it's been a pleasure talking with you and I'm sure there are many more things we can talk about, so I made an unfortunate shut it down before we go off on another excursion. But yes, thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Thanks, alex, it's been lovely, very interesting, so great. Thank you, chris, Thank you.