Settling in Paris

Gall and Spurzheim arrived in Paris during October 1807, while the Napoleonic Wars were still raging and where Napoleon Bonaparte was reshaping every aspect of society. Napoleon despised foreigners and considered Gall’s doctrine absurd. He urged Georges Cuvier, one of his appointed guardians of French science, to reject it. Nonetheless, Gall made inroads, giving public lectures and demonstrations on his organologie that were well received, while seeing patients to support himself. Encouraged by these ventures, he and Spurzheim wrote a Mémoire and submitted it to the Institut National in 1808. Cuvier, who headed the evaluating committee and was being guided by Napoleon, rejected it as unoriginal and unsuitable for the division for Sciences Mathématiques et Physiques, even though the subject matter was basic anatomy and not more controversial organologie. Gall was furious and sent letters expressing his disappointment to Cuvier, but to no avail. Consequently, he published a book covering the submission, the rejection, and his retorts. And rather than leaving France, he opted to continue his lecturing and medical practice in the city with many amenities, and he continued to work on a series of volumes he was already calling his “great work.”