An inquiry into the physiognomy of phthisis by the method of 'composite portraiture' / by Francis Galton and F.A. Mahomed.

  • Galton, Sir Francis, 1822-1911.
Date:
[1881]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the physiognomy of phthisis by the method of 'composite portraiture' / by Francis Galton and F.A. Mahomed. 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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    generations have sufficed to effect the change, so that the deformed and ill-formed faces, the direct products of disease, when sufficiently diluted, may give rise to the comely and attractive face seen in the composite, fig. 31, and in one or two of its components. In this way we may often observe the disappearance of eccentricities and deformities, and that return to the average type, by which alone the maintenance of the race is possible. In Plates III and IV, the male patients having the same characteristics as the females in Plate II, have been selected and combined. They have required greater subdivision on account of their larger number and the growth of hair upon the faces. Among the narrow ovoids the selection has not been sufficiently critical, and several have been admitted which might with advantage have been excluded; the final co-com- posite, PI. Ill, fig. 33, would then have been more typical. As it is, the outlines are somewhat ill-defined, and the face scarcely as narrow as it should be. In this group, moreover, numbers have increased the difficulty of arriving at a type; it contains fifty-one components and its tendency is to revert to the general average, as may be seen by comparing it with fig. 17, which it much resembles. We would remark that the nine composites forming the com- ponents of fig. 33 are only stages in the production of the co- composite. The faces in each composite have not been selected for their resemblance to each other, but merely as belonging to the narrow-ovoid class. They have been chiefly taken in the order in which they were photographed, except that in the first three figures the hairless faces have been put together while in the next two those wearing hair have been combined; all contained in these first five composites were patients at Brompton, those in the next three at Guy's, and those in the last at Victoria Park. The component composites of fig. 33 are more characteristic than the co-composite itself, though not so typical in many cases as they should be. Fig. 34 somewhat resembles fig. 30, and one of its components, No. 101, bears some resemblance to No. 578 in the female group. These are the two most typical faces in either, and partake more largely of the characteristic features of the groups than any other single faces; they therefore more