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.

    18/32 page 16
    closely resemble the composites. It may be argued that they have contributed too large a share to each, and possibly this may be true. They both exhibit in a striking degree the charac- teristics of the lower so-called tubercular type already described. Out of the components of fig. 34, No. 160 should have been excluded. In fig. 35, No. 192 might have been omitted on account of the irregularity of his features, but his ears are highly charac- teristic of the semi-idiotic or degraded type. Figs. 36 and 37 are striking faces and good results, but in fig. 38 none of the faces are very characteristic, though all belong to the narrow ovoid class. Fig. 39 has been ruined by the admission of Nos. 7 and 11; No. 7 can only have been admitted by mistake, and No. 11 owes his admission to his emaciation and not to his original conformation; for the broad strong angles of his lower jaw are characters the reverse of what is noticeable in the other faces on this page. No. 6 also might have been excluded with advantage. Fig. 39 may be compared with fig. 18, and a strong resemblance traced between them and accounted for by the fact that among its fifty-six components fig. 18 includes all the components of fig. 39, as it does also those of fig. 40. From the latter figure Nos. 20 and 36 and perhaps No. 15 might have been omitted. Indeed, had the last two figures been merged into one and only allowed to include Nos. 9, 13, 28, 24, and perhaps 23, a far better result would have been obtained, both in it and in the final result (fig. 33). Time, however, did not allow us to make these alteration?; wheu, on arranging these plates the errors of selection were discovered ; in some measure it is perhaps desirable that the corrections should not have been made, for it will allow our readers to see both the strength and weakness of the process, that is, its mechanical accuracy and the check it makes on the selection of faces, and, on the other hand, the failures and misleading results obtainable by bad selection. This question of selection is still further emphasised by fig. 41 (Plate IV), which contains a very ill-assorted collection of faces; long and short faces, and the broad lower jaw of No. 212, being all mingled in terrible con- fusion, giving the many outlines to the face obtained in fig. 41, in which almost every one of its components can be traced.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3