physiognomyArticle Free Pass physiognomy, the study of the
systematic correspondence of psychological characteristics to
facial features or body structure. Because most efforts to
specify such relationships have been discredited, physiognomy
sometimes connotes pseudoscience or charlatanry. Physiognomy was
regarded by those who cultivated it both as a mode of
discriminating character by the outward appearance and as a
method of divination from form and feature. Physiognomy is of
great antiquity, and in ancient and medieval times it had an
extensive literature. Inasmuch as genetic flaws are sometimes
revealed by physical characteristics (e.g., the characteristic
appearance of Down syndrome, with up-slanted eyes and broad,
flat face), some elements of physiognomy evolved in physiology
and biochemistry. In its second aspect—i.e., divination from
form and feature—it was related to astrology and other forms of
divination, and this aspect of the subject bulked large in the
fanciful literature of the Middle Ages. The