Scottish lawyer and author of popular books on PHRENOLOGY. One of 13 children, Combe grew up in a poor family in a partially industrialized section of Edinburgh, Scotland. His father owned and operated a small brewery in the building where the family lived. George was educated in local schools, and apprenticed in a law office before starting his own practice. In 1816, Johann SPURZHEIM went to Scotland to lecture on phrenology, and in spite of initial doubts, Combe was converted. Upon studying the new “science of the mind” in greater detail, he began to lecture and write essays espousing its virtues.
In 1828 Combe produced the first edition of his best-known work, The Constitution of Man in Relation to External Objects, which would eventually go through dozens of editions and become one of the best-selling English language books of the mid-19th century. In it, Combe expounded an elaborate, often proscriptive, scheme that detailed the relationship of the human brain to morality, intellect, and behavior. Combe did not have the medical background that phrenologists such as Franz Joseph GALL and Spurzheim did, and though he would champion their anatomical and physiological claims, his work emphasized phrenology as a system of practical moral philosophy. Like Spurzheim, Combe felt that phrenology could be used for social reform and aggressively promoted its use in education, penology, and mental institutions. In 1836 he made an unsuccessful bid for the Chair of Logic at Edinburgh University, and a year later the newly founded University of Michigan offered him a position, which he politely declined.