CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
With this diagram, Punch (1841) pokes fun at phrenology by classifying the four great divisions of the stomach. Amazingly, the spoof is perfectly accurate! The "Sustaining Faculties" at the lower belly take cognizance of those staple foods which are essential to the sustenance of animal life. The "Affections" govern the more delicate appetites gratified by the contemplation of finer meals to come. The "Superior Sentiments" at the center "direct the stomach to the investigation of sauces, French cookery, and other abstruse subjects." The "Intellectual Taste" at the top of the belly is "the faculty of reasoning and reflecting upon the abstract qualities of olives, the Italian salads, of comparing Stilton with Gruyère cheese, and tracing the relation between turtle-punch and headache."
A phrenology patient is inspired to check for bumps on his dog's head in this illustration from Arthur's Home Magazine, 1861. The subspecialty of veterinary phrenology was rare but not unknown. The strange history of an elephant phrenology is told in Jan Bondeson's The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History.