On measurements as a diagnostic means for distinguishing the human races : a systematic plan established and investigated by the undersigned, for the purpose of taking measurements on individuals of different races during the voyage of H.I.R.M.'s frigate 'Novara' round the world.

  • Scherzer, Karl, Ritter von, 1821-1903.
Date:
[1858]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On measurements as a diagnostic means for distinguishing the human races : a systematic plan established and investigated by the undersigned, for the purpose of taking measurements on individuals of different races during the voyage of H.I.R.M.'s frigate 'Novara' round the world. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    OF TAKING MEASURExMENTS ON INDIVIDUALS OF DIFFERENT RACES DURING THE VOYAGE OF H. I. R. M.’s FRIGATE “NOVARA” ROUND THE WORLD. The vague and unsatisfactory classification of man into four, five, seven and even eleven races, totally different from each other with respect to their form and structure, appears to be the best proof of the deficiency of our present knowledge of the deviating particularities of mankind. Thus Leibnitz and Lacepede divide the human race into Europeans, Laplanders, Mongols, and Negroes; Linnaeus into white, red, yellow, and black; Kant into white, copper-coloured, black and olive-coloured races; Blumenbachinto Caucasians, .Ethiopians, Mongols, Americans, and Malays; Buffon into Northern (viz. Laplanders), Tartarian, South Asiatic, Black, European, and American races; Hunter into black, blackish, red, copper-coloured, black-brown, brown, and white races; Prichard into Iranians (also Indo-atlantics or Caucasians); Turanians (Mongolians), Americans, Hottentots and Bushmen, Negroes, Papuas, (or wool-haired tribes of Polynesia) and Alfourous (or Australians); Pickering into Whites, Mongolians, Malays, Indians, Negroes, Ethiopians, Abyssinians, Papuas, Negritos, Australians and Hottentots.* Together wfith the acknowledgment of this deficiency there must rise in the mind of every scientific investigator the anxious desire to agree with regard to * This classification, according to external, and for the most part unessential marks of distinction, as colour of the skin, colour and form of the hair, or with reference to their probable primitive geographical position, as for instance : Iranians (of Iran, a country situated to the south and south-east of the Caspian Sea, which Dr. Prichard considers to be the original seat of that race), or Turanians (of Turan, the name of a country bordering on Iran in the north and north-east, which already in the remotest times was inhabited by a part of that race), is extremely indefinite and uncertain, because a negro, even if we should change artificially the colour of his skin and his woolly hair, will not become an European, an Indian, or a Malay; and because a child of European parents begot amj bora on one of the isles of the Malayan Archipelago or in ^Ethiopia, will not be a Malay or an ^Ethiopian, but an European by race, although the colour of its skin may possibly approach, by climatical or local influences to that of the indigenous race.—(Compare also Humboldt’s Cosmos, vol I., p. 361— 363; translated by E. C. Otte.)