An Organ of Murder explores the origins of both popular and elite theories of criminality in the nineteenth-century United States. This work traces the long-lasting influence of phrenological visual culture and language in America, as well as the practical uses of phrenology in courts, prisons, and daily life.

COURTNEY E. THOMPSON is an assistant professor of the history of science and medicine and U.S. women’s history at Mississippi State University in Starkville. She received her Ph.D. from the program in the history of science and medicine of Yale University in 2015.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments 
Introduction    Through a Mirror, Darkly
1                      Origins and Organs     
2                      Transatlantic Societies and Skulls
3                      Phrenology on Trial
4                      The Prison as Laboratory
5                      Policing the Self and the Stranger 
6                      A Victory for Phrenology?     
Epilogue          Phrenological Futures             
Notes
Bibliography
Inde