A biographical memoir of Samuel George Morton, M.D : prepared by appointment of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and read before that body, November 3, 1852 / by George B. Wood.

  • George Bacon Wood
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A biographical memoir of Samuel George Morton, M.D : prepared by appointment of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and read before that body, November 3, 1852 / by George B. Wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    The possession of such materials naturally led to the wish to give diffusion and permanence to the knowledge which they laid open. Hence originated Dr. Morton's great work on American Crania, in which accurate pictorial representations are given of a great number of the skulls of the aborigines of this continent, with descriptions, historical notices, and various scientific observations; all preceded by an essay on the varieties of the human species, calculated to give consistency to the necessarily desultory state- ments which follow. The preparation of this work cost the author a vast deal of labor, and an amount of pecuniary expenditure which has never been repaid, unless by the reputation w7hich it gained for him, and the consciousness of having erected a monu- ment to science, honorable to his country, and likely to remain as a durable memorial of his own zeal, industry, and scientific attain- ment. It was published in 1839. It is due to Dr. W. S. W. Ruschenberger to state, that the work was inscribed to him by Dr. Morton, with the acknowledgment that some of its most valuable materials were derived from his researches in Peru. In September, 1839, Dr. Morton was elected Professor of Anatomy in the Pennsylvania Medical College, the duties of which office he performed until November, 1843, when he resigned. In this Institution he was associated with the late Dr. George McClellan, who may be looked on as its founder, and for whom he formed a friendship which ended only with life. On the 26th of May, 1840, he was elected one of the Vice-Pre- sidents of the Academy of Natural Sciences, in which capacity he very often presided at its meetings, in the absence of the Presi- dent. He was engaged about this time in preparing a highly interest- ing memoir on the subject of Egyptian Ethnography, based mainly upon the observation and comparison of numerous crania, in the collection of which he was much aided by Mr. George R. Gliddon whose residence in Egypt gave him opportunities, which an ex- traordinary zeal in all that concerns the ancient inhabitants of that region, urged him to employ to the best possible advantage. This memoir was embraced in several communications to the American Philosophical Society, in the years 1842 and 1843 which were published in the Transactions of that Society (Vol. IX.] New Series, p. 93, A. D. 1844), and also in a separate form under