PHRENOLOGICAL JOURNAL, New York, May, 1865

* Abraham Lincoln assassination w/ print

 Phrenology is a theory that the personality traits of a person can be derived from the shape of their skull. Although holding no validity today, it was a popular science in the mid-19th century and this periodical focused on it.
The feature of this issue is the page near the back which is devoted to Abraham Lincoln, including a nice portrait of him and a black-bordered article on his life.
Seven other pages has portraits of various people with comments on their phrenological particulars.
Complete in 32 pages, rare in that this issue still has the original & graphic outer wrappers, quite rare as such. Nice condition, 9 1/2 by 11 3/4 inches.

Background: The publication of this May 1865 issue of the Phrenological Journal captures a profound intersection of American grief, media history, and 19th-century pseudoscience immediately following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Printing a black-bordered tribute just weeks after Lincoln's death, the journal documents a pivotal moment of national mourning while showcasing how the popular, albeit flawed, "science" of phrenology was used to decode the character of a martyred leader. Because mid-19th-century periodicals were routinely stripped of their advertising covers when bound into library volumes, the survival of this issue with its original graphic outer wrappers intact offers an incredibly rare, unvarnished look at how the public physically consumed news of the tragedy. It serves as a stark cultural artifact, reflecting both the frantic media rush to memorialize the president and the era's unique obsession with reading human destiny and moral worth through physical form.