American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany.
Other titles: American Phrenological Journal, and Repository of Science, Literature and General Intelligence (January 1851-1860); American Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated (May 1861-1869); Phrenological Journal and Packard's Monthly (1870); Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated (Jan. 1871-1881); Phrenological Journal and Science of Health (1882-1896); Phrenological Journal and Science of Health, Incorporated with the English Phrenological Magazine (1897)
1838--1911 Monthly
Philadelphia, PA, then New York, NY.
Language: English.
Publisher: A. Waldie, printer, Philadelphia; O.S. Fowler, Fowler's Phrenological Press, New York; O.S. & L.N. Fowler, proprietors, New York; Fowler & Wells Co.; Samuel R. Wells; Fowler & Wells Co.; Fowler & Wells Co. (New York) and L.N. Fowler & Co. (London). Editor: Nathan Allen, A.M., M.D.; Orson Squire Fowler (editor 1841-1855); Nelson Sizer (editor, 1859-1863); Samuel R. Wells; H.S. Drayton and N. Sizer; Charlotte Fowler Wells and Jessie Allen Fowler; Edgar C. Beall (1896- ).
Succeeds: Life illustrated (absorbed May 1861); Packard's Monthly (absorbed April 1870); Science of Health (absorbed July 1876); Phrenological Magazine (London, absorbed January 1897) Succeeded by: American Phrenological Journal, and Repository of Science, Literature and General Intelligence (January 1851-1860)-->American Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated (May 1861-1869)-->Phrenological Journal and Packard's Monthly (1870)-->Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated (Jan. 1871-1881)--> Phrenological Journal and Science of Health (1882-1896); Phrenological Journal and Science of Health, Incorporated with the English Phrenological Magazine (1897)
1/1, October 1838-124/862, January 1911. $1.00-$2.00 a year. 32-34 pp. in a single column originally, rising to 80 pp. in dense double columns in 1871.

This was the longest lived phrenological journal and a marvel of adaptability in its ability to expand its fields of interest to new areas as phrenology declined in popularity.

The journal began as the American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany. The inclusion of "American" in the title was to distinguish it from the Phrenological Journal published in Edinburgh and the title showed both the journal's recognition of its roots in European (primarily British) phrenology and its conscious attempt to distinguish its own more popular version of the new science from the more "scientific" and medical views of phrenology prevalent in Britain.

The journal was originally published for anonymous proprietors in Philadelphia, who were soon revealed as O.S. and L.N. Fowler. The "Phrenological Fowlers" were the product of a fad for phrenology among the students of Amherst College in the early 1830s. Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887) borrowed George Combe's Elements of Phrenology (1824) from his classmate Henry Ward Beecher, learned the science and devised a practical, easily understood method of delineations and a simplified chart of faculties, and went on the road to lecture and delineate to eager crowds while awaiting his entry into the seminary. His success prompted his younger brother Lorenzo Niles (1811-1896) to join the business and the brothers, aided by their sister Charlotte (1814-1901), opened offices in New York and then in Philadelphia, where the journal was started. In 1841, O.S. became sole owner and editor and moved the journal to New York. In 1843 they were joined by Samuel R. Wells (1820-1875), a student of the Fowlers, who with them started Fowlers & Wells in 1846. This became Fowler & Wells after the retirement of O.S. in 1855, and thereafter Wells was publisher under his own imprint until after his death in 1875 when his widow, Charlotte, at first under her own name and then as Fowler & Wells, became proprietor and Drayton and Sizer editors. LN left for Britain in 1860 where he established L.N. Fowler & Co. in London and, in 1880, started the Phrenological Magazine, which was consolidated with this journal in 1897. His daughter Jessie Allen Fowler first edited the Phrenological Magazine and then, beginning in 1896, helped edit this journal. As of January 1, 1896, the American Phrenological Journal (then called The journal announced that Edgar C. Beall and Colonel Nat Ward Fitz-Gerald of West Virginia had bought control of Fowler & Wells, with the announced purpose of increasing circulation of the journal to 100,000 and re-invigorating it generally. Beall took over editing the journal. He was later editor of Vim magazine, president of the New York College of Phrenophysics and proponent of Sexual Science.

The Fowlers were reformers to the bone, advocates of woman suffrage, temperance, the water cure, anti-slavery (despite the inherent racialist tendencies in the new science that characterized intelligence and virtue in decidedly Northern European terms). Phrenology, despite the seeming determinism of its fundamental belief in a physical basis for character and behavior, easily provided a foundation for free will and personal development through the careful development of certain faculties and the repression of others under the guidance of phrenology. This was exemplified by O.S. Fowler's Self-Culture and Perfection of Character (1847) and a variety of books on self-help, general life advice (Wells' Wedlock, 1870, for example), etc. For years the masthead carried the engraving of a studious man in his cluttered study with an angel holding a crown of victory over his head. As the fad for phrenology declined the journal easily moved to include fad foods ("purified Solidified Cacao," etc.) and generally the "Restoration of Health, on Hygienic Principles; Nature's Remedial Agencies are Light, Air, Temperature, Electricity, Diet, Bathing, Sleep, Exercises and Rest," and also drew within its compass physiognomy, magnetism, Delsartean Physical Culture, character reading, medical electricity, psychometry, clairvoyance, thought transference, Mental Science, etc. Spiritualism, while not formally connected to phrenology, also found a place in the journal and Fowler & Wells and, especially, Wells (under his Samuel R. Wells imprint) were prominent publishers of spiritualist literature.

The journal was profusely illustrated with drawings (replaced in later years by photographs) to illustrate phrenological types and examinations and every issue carried an extensive biography, with picture, of a prominent person, including John D. Rockefeller, Mary Baker Eddy, Annie Besant, Robert E. Lee, Bayard Taylor, and many more. The journal carried phrenological contributions by a great variety of now unknown practitioners and theoreticians of the science but also carried contributions by the likes of Alexander Wilder (including children's fiction by him). There were an enormous number of "departments" and columns on a variety of subjects, mostly of supposedly general interest and intelligence (the migration of squirrels, the ethology of the Mormons, why do bald people disproportionately frequent churches, cures for near-sightedness, book reviews, etc.). The journal carried advertisements from its earliest years, with the number increasing over time as the publishers realized that the profit in magazines was not in the subscriptions but in the advertisements, and offered impressive premiums to entice readers. Prominent in the advertisements were their own American Phrenological Institute in New York (founded in 1866 by Wells, Horace Greeley, A. Oakley Hall, Russell T. Trail, et al.) and the Fowler Institute in London, which taught phrenology and supplied the literature and accoutrements helpful to the practice. By the mid-1850s the journal claimed a circulation of 24,000.

Beginning in 1839, the journal put out an annual almanac under a variety of names, collected here as Phrenological Almanac.