THE ILLUSTRATED SELF-INSTRUCTOR IN PHRENOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY, by O.S. FOWLER. "With Over One Hundred Engravings".

NEW YORK: Fowler and Wells, Publishers, [1860].

SIGNED and DATED 1860 by O.S. FOWLER who also handwrote the name of the individual for whom he "marked a chart" in this book (though I see no indication other than the number "21 1/2" handwritten on page [iii].

Hardcovers, 5x7.5 inches, 176 pages plus 4 pages of Publisher's ads at the rear.

GOOD condition, the covers have some wear to the corner tips and spine ends but are holding together well; internally, there is offsetting to the endpapers, foxing mainly to the margins here and there throughout, otherwise tight, bright, clean, clear and unmarked. A solid, presentable copy.

About O.S. FOWLER (from Wikipedia):

******Orson Squire Fowler, b.1809 d.1887, was an American phrenologist and lecturer. He also popularized the octagon house in the middle of the nineteenth century.

With his brother Lorenzo Niles Fowler, he opened a phrenological office in New York City and soon they became the foremost proponents of phrenology in the United States. Orson wrote and lectured on phrenology, preservation of health, popular education and social reform.

O.S. Fowler held forth for the equality for women at a time when women had virtually no legal rights, championed children's rights at a time when child labor was widespread, and through his publications called for the end of slavery which he called a "monstrous evil".

HOWEVER, MANY OF HIS PHRENOLOGICAL BELIEFS WERE ABHORRENT and were used to justify slavery and advance a belief in African-American inferiority. Based on his phrenological views, Fowler wrote that coarse hair correlated with coarse fibers in the brain, and indicated coarse feelings that, he wrote, suggested people of African descent had poor verbal skills and traits that were best suited for nursing children or waiting on tables. Fowler was also known to be antisemitic.

Fowler was a teetotaler and vegetarian. He promoted a vegetarian diet in his book Physiology: Animal and Mental and was vice-president of the American Vegetarian Society in 1852. He defended animal rights and opposed the slaughter of animals. His magazine The American Phrenological Journal also supported vegetarianism.******