Licence: In copyright
Credit: The future of anthropometry / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.
![THE FUTUEE OF ANTHEOPOMETEY. By Charles S. Myers, M.A., M.D. [Presented January 13th, 1903.] The attempt to predict the future of any science is only possible after a review of its past and present history. Fortunately as regards anthropometry, the stages which have marked its development are so well known that only a brief summary need be given here. In the year 1799, Charles White, a Manchester surgeon, published the results of measurements made by him upon about fifty African negroes in order to determine certain differences between them and European peoples. Since then, an enormous amount of labour has been spent in collecting other measurements. The ratios of head-breadth to head-length, of nose-breadth to nose-length, of leg-length to thigh-length, etc., expressed as so many indices, have been determined upon individuals or skeletons from most parts of the globe. The averages or means of series of indices obtained from one people have been compared with the averages or means obtained from other peoples. It is unnecessary here to point out the wide differences which have been found to exist for any one index among the different peoples of the world; how, for instance, the average cephalic index, which in the Flew Caledonian is 70, reaches 85 or more in certain districts of Central Europe, or how the average nasal index rises from 4T9 among the Esquimaux to 60*2 among the Bushman tribes. A further step in the advancement of anthropometric research was made when attention began to be paid to the values of the individual indices from which these means had been calculated. It was observed, for instance, that a people, which gave an average nasal index of 57*9, contained individuals whose nasal index was less than 49 or greater than 68,1 or that a people whose cephalic index averaged 77*5, yet contained individuals whose cephalic index was 66 and 85.2 A study of the extent and frequency of such deviations from the mean was thus initiated. Binomial curves of indices were plotted out; but it was found that, instead of giving a plain, smooth, singly-crested line, they showed many varieties of asymmetry, and almost universally two, three or more peaks or modes. As each peak, of course, implied that individual indices were crowded in greater number at that point than elsewhere in the immediate neighbourhood, these peaks or modes were taken to represent types. Thus arose the art, which is still very widely practised, of dissecting out types from the indices obtained from a group of people, 1 Shrubsall, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., 1899, vol. xxviii, pp. 100, 103. 2 Topinard, Elements d'Anthropologic Generate, Paris, 1885, p. 387. a THE CHARLES MYERS](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30603493_0003.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
