Orson Squire Fowler, American Phrenologist

Orson Squire Fowler (October 11, 1809 - August 18, 1887) was a an American phrenologist. He opened a phrenological office in New York City with his brother, Lorenzo Niles Fowler, and wrote and lectured on phrenology, preservation of health, popular education and social reform from 1834 to 1887. The Fowler brothers were in large measure responsible for the mid-19th century popularity of phrenology. He edited and published the American Phrenological Journal from 1838 to 1842. Fowler, also an amateur architect, is also responsible for the octagon style house briefly popular in the 1850s in the United States and Canada. Their unusual shape and appearance are quite different from the ornate pitched-roof houses typical of the period. He held forth for the equality for women at a time when women had virtually no legal rights in the United States, and he stood for children's rights when child labor was quite acceptable. He was crucial in the original publication of his good friend Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. He died in 1887 at the age of 77

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