A laboratory manual of anthropometry

Abstract

It has long been a reproach to American science that now, for many years, the branch of Physical Anthropology has been so little cultivated, and this the more because of our early prestige in this very field and because of our unrivalled opportunities.When Morton, in 1839, published his Crania Americana, and followed this in 1844 by a similar work, the Crania Aegyptiaca, he gave the United States a leading place in the then new science of Craniology, but now after eighty years, in this and in related fields, American names are as rare in bibliographies as American merchant ships have been until recently upon the high seas.With the vast possibilities for ethnological study furnished by our aborigines, with the importation in the past of large numbers of negroes from Africa, which are now numbered by millions, and with the hordes of alien peoples from all parts of the world, who seek a foothold in the still new continent, not even Rome herself, in Imperial times, could supply such enormous ethnological material, yet the advantages taken of such opportunities have been but slight.Every large European power, and at least one Asiatic one (Japan), has surpassed the United States in Anthropometric work.In this line of Anthropometry, or Biometric Ethnology, especially, unheeded by and almost unknown to, American science, a great body of facts has been compiled in Europe, the facts being obtained by means of European instruments, collected by means of European technical methods, and rendered significant by means of European scholarship.Some twenty years ago the growing need of unifying the technical measurements, at least those most commonly employed, became more and more apparent, and led to the adoption of a set of prescriptions governing the more important measurements of the skull, and of the head and facial features in the living.This was established at the meeting of 1906 of the International Congress of Anthropologists, held at Monaco, and the Committee consisted of representatives of France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, but neither England nor America.The official report was in French by the Secretary, M. Papillault, and was published in the periodical L'Anthropologie.The movement towards a standardization of measurements excited a continually increasing interest, and its next official manifestation came at the Congress of the same body in 1912, meeting at Geneva.The Committee which prepared this report was a larger one (24 members), and included, beside the countries represented at the former one, Spain, Russia, Great Britain, Russian Poland, Hungary and the United States.This second report consisted of standardized X CONTENTS PART II.SOMATOMETRY; THE MEASUREMENT OF THE BODY.Landmarks 151 Measurements 155-163 (a) General Considerations; Position of Subject 155 (&) Lists of the Usual Measurements 158 (c) Measurements obtained by Calculation from the above 163 Indices 164

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