This is the first in a five part series on the phrenological vital and non-vital temperaments and rules for marriage, excerpted from Plain Home Talk by Edward B. Foote, M.D., 1894.
“The sanguine temperament,” remarks Dr. Powell, “is the tonic temperament of Dr. Darwin, and the mixed one of Dr. F. Thomas, of France; but I prefer to retain the denomination of Hippocrates. In the white variety of our species, this temperament is distinguished by light hair, fair skin, and grayish blue eyes. In both the white and black variety, it is distinguished by firm flesh and strong and full pulse, a forehead that recedes and contracts latterly as it rises; the nose is generally above the average in size, and has the Roman form in well-defined representatives, but in the females the nose has the Grecian form, the lips close beautifully, the upper being the more prominent. This class,” continues Dr. Powell, “has, in every historic age of our species, furnished the most admired models of the human form, and I am much inclined to the opinion that human perfection, in all of its aspects, is more nearly achieved in this than in any other class.”
This writer [Dr. Foote] puts forward General Washington and the Hon. Edward Everett as excellent representatives of this temperament. The illustrations herein given are drawn from the imagination, present to the mind as fully as possible, marked representatives fo the temperaments so far as as the facial and cranial conformation can be made to indicate them. In the annexed cut, Fig. 174, we have, at the top a profile view, in the centre a front view, and at the bottom a three-quarters view of the head of a female of the sanguine temperament.
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