Foibles of insects and men / by William Morton Wheeler.

  • Wheeler, William Morton, 1865-1937.
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Foibles of insects and men / by William Morton Wheeler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/264 (page 5)
    John Calvin as asthenics and FalstafF (as conceived by Shakespeare), Martin Luther and ex-President Taft as pycnics. In fiction Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are good examples of the two types. Bud Fisher's creation of Mutt and Jeff may also be cited in this connection. The great mass of human individuals, however, may be regarded as blends or mosaics of the two types in varying proportions. Even during the lifetime of the same individual, the asthenic may predominate at one time, the pycnic at another. Often the young are asthenic and become pycnic with advancingyears, and we have all seen examples of the re¬ verse transformation of pyc¬ nic youngsters into asthenic oldsters. Undoubtedly the endocrine glands, and espe¬ cially the thyroid, pituitary and interstitial glands, are concerned in the production of both the extreme and the intermediate tvpes. Amongthelatter Kretsch¬ mer recognizes several cate¬ gories. One of these is the ' 'athletic, ’ ’ which I need not describe as the reader is fa¬ Figure i. The Four Human Types of Claude Sigaud, Schematized by Pierre Tobin. miliar with its physical and mental peculiarities from the football and baseball field, the gymnasium, vaudeville stage and movies. Kretschmer further distinguishes “dysplastic” types, which show more or less patho¬ logical defect- or excess-development (hypoplastic or hyperplastic develop¬ ment) in certain characters, but I shall pass over these distinctions and for the sake of brevity and clarity call all the intermediates athletic. The same or similar types have been recognized by other investigators and have been reviewed by Bauer (1914). The asthenic, athletic and pycnic types of Kretschmer evidently correspond to the phthisic, athletic and plethoric habitus of de Giovanni and to Beneke’s microsomatic, micro¬ plastic, microskelic, longilineus, or longitypus and megalosomatic, eury- plastic, brachyskelic, brevilineus, or brachytvpus, with the intermediate normosplanchnic, normosomatic, mesoplastic, normolineus, normotypus. The two extreme types correspond to Viola’s microsplanchnic, or phthisic habitus and megalosplanchnic, or apoplectic habitus, to Bryant’s carnivorous and vegetarian types, Bean’s hypermorph and mesomorph types, Stockard’s linear and lateral types, etc. Obviously the pycnic type is that of the human infant. According to Stockard (19x3) the linear type is the faster growing,