A laboratory manual of anthropometry / by Harris H. Wilder.

  • Harris Hawthorne Wilder
Date:
[1920]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A laboratory manual of anthropometry / by Harris H. Wilder. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    out the fact that a total height obtained from an articulated skeleton depended too much upon the preparator who put the bones together, and hence disregarded this uncertain measurement in favor of one involving the length of a single long bone, or of two combined. He thus substi- tuted for Humphrey’s standard, now the length of the femur, now that of the radius, or again the combined lengths of humerus and radius or femur and tibia, with each of which, in turn, with a value of 100, the lengths of the other long arm and leg bones was compared. The next great advance in treating the general subject of racial anthropometry was the realization of the fact that many of the bones could be measured practically as well in the living subject by ascer- taining the precise location of their termini by palpation; also that cer- tain integumental landmarks, not associated with the skeleton, such as the umbilicus and the nipples, were of considerable value in the study of proportions. This line of work, the anthropometry of the living subject, developed naturally in the field, as osteometry had developed in the museum, and was the direct result of the series of great scientific voyages, like those of the Novara and the Challenger, characteristic of the last third of the Nineteenth Century. Naturally in the develop- ment of physical ethnology the facial features had long received much attention, and had become the subject of careful measurements, with aver- ages and indices, and the extension of this work to the rest of the body naturally followed. During this epoch, in 1882, to be precise, a young anthropologist, M. Alphonse Bertillon, noticing the individual character of bodily measurements, saw in them important data for the solution of the many difficulties which, up to this time, confronted the Judicial arm of the French Government, that of establishing the individual identity of crimi- nals, and inaugurated the famous system of “Bertillonage,” based upon eleven easily taken measurements, a system that has now for many years yielded the most satisfactory results, and is still in general us , although now being rapidly replaced by the Finger-print System of Galton and Henry.* The investigators of this period began by measuring the distances between landmarks directly, that is, the lengths of the long bones from end to end, as had been previously done with the shorter distances of the head and face, but it was soon seen that if the subject were standing erect, with heels together, in military position, it was necessary only to ascertain the distance from the floor of each terminus, and obtain the various required lengths by subtraction of one height from another, thus sparing time to both subject and operator in the work of measuring, at best a tedious process. This was naturally possible only when arms and legs were held “straight,” i.e., perpendicular to the floor, so that it is always necessary for the subject to stand as erect as he can. Aside from . * Wilder and Wentworth: “Personal Identification.” Badger, Boston, 1918.
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