Physiognomy
Physiognomy is a pseudoscientific discipline that purports to find
correspondences between psychological attributes and physical features of
the head, face, and body. Victor has every reason to use the term, since
his medieval mentor Albertus Magnus
wrote extensively about physiognomy and the mixture of humors in the body
and mind. As Mary Shelley would
have been well aware, this discipline was resurrected in the later
eighteenth century by a countryman of Victor Frankenstein's, Johann Kaspar Lavater (11 November 1741 - 2 January 1801), a resident of Zurich. His
Essays on Physiognomy (1775-1778; translated into English in
1789-1798) made him world-famous,
inspiring many a quack psychologist of his day, and many further days
across the ensuing century. More seriously relevant for the context of
Frankenstein might be the title of an earlier work of Lavater's,
Geheimes Tagebuch von einem Beobachter seiner selbst (1772-73), which was translated into
English in 1795 under the
title Secret Journal of a Self-Observer.
Compare 1.2.5 and note and 1.6.12 and note.
