[20]. North American Med.-Chir. Rev., 1861, p. 840.
Various Early Craniologists.
The evolution of craniometrical measurements is of interest to the physical anthropologist, but even a brief recital of this progress would weary the non-specialist. A history of Anthropology would, however, not be complete if it ignored the general trend of such investigations.
Some of the early workers, such as Daubenton (1716-99) and Mulder, Walther, Barclay, and Serres in the first half of the nineteenth century, attempted to express the relation between the brain-case and the face by some simple measurement or method of comparison in their endeavour to formulate not only the differences between the races of mankind, but also those which obtain between men and the lower animals.
Others during the same period investigated the relations and proportions of portions of the skull to the whole by means of lines. Spix (1815) adopted five lines. Herder employed a series of lines radiating from the atlas (the uppermost bone of the vertebral column); but, more generally, the meatus auditorius (ear-hole) was the starting-point (Doornik, 1815).
The internal capacity of the skull first received attention from Tiedemann (1836), who determined it by filling the skull with millet seed and then ascertaining the weight of the seed. Morton first used white pepper seed, which he discarded later for No. 8 shot, while Volkoff employed water. Modifications in the use of these three media—seeds, shot, and water—are still employed by craniologists.
The most noteworthy names among the earlier workers in craniology are those of Retzius and Grattan. Anders Retzius (1796-1860) correlated the schemes of Blumenbach and Camper, and so arrived at the methods of craniological measurements which are almost universally in use at the present day.
Cephalic Index of Retzius.
In 1840 he introduced his theory regarding cranial shapes to the Academy of Science at Stockholm, and two years later gave a course of lectures on the same subject. He criticised the results attained by Blumenbach, showing that his group contains varying types of skull form; and he invented the cephalic index, or length-breadth index—i.e., the ratio of the breadth of a skull to its length, expressed as a per-centage. The narrower skulls he termed dolichocephalic, the broader ones brachycephalic. By this method Retzius designed rather to arrange the forms of crania than to classify thereby the races of mankind, though he tried to group the European peoples more or less according to their head-form. While thus elaborating the suggestion of Blumenbach, he also recorded the degree of the projection of the jaws, demonstrated by Camper, and he added the measurements of the face, height, and jugular breadth. Thus was Craniology established on its present lines.
Grattan.