A man of strong convictions and very conservative, de Quatrefages was ever ready to hear the other side, and ever candid and kindly in argument. He was one of the first to support the Society of Anthropology. Those who know the story of the early days of that great association understand what that means. When the claim for man’s antiquity was generally derided, de Quatrefages championed the cause. A monogenist [p. [53]], a believer in the extreme antiquity of our race, he was never won over by any of the proposed theories of evolution.... To the very end of a long life our author lived happily and busily active among his books and specimens.
Virchow.
In Germany the greatest name is that of Virchow. Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow (1821-1902) had already gained fame in the medical world, especially with regard to histology, pathology, and the study of epidemics, and was the prime leader in the “Medizinische Reform” movement before he began his valuable contributions to the science of Anthropology.
His first anthropological writings were some papers on cretinism (1851 and 1852), and from this date onwards his services to the science can scarcely be over-estimated. Much of his energy was also given to somatic anthropology, and in 1866 he started his investigations into prehistoric archæology, combining scientific method with spade-work.
In a notice of his work by Oscar Israel[[27]] (p. 656) we read:—
[27]. Smithsonian Report, 1902. Translated from the Deutsche Rundschau of Dec., 1902.
Virchow devoted himself to ethnographic studies no less than to other branches of anthropology, and here he became a center to which the material streamed from all sides, and from which went forth suggestion, criticism, and energetic assistance. This never-idle man did not disdain to teach travelers schooled in other lines of investigation the anthropometric methods; and, indeed, he found time for everything, and never left a piece of work to others that he could possibly do himself. Thus, for example, for ten years following its inception by him in 1876, he worked up alone the data recorded in German schools as to the color of the eyes, the hair, and the skin which has proved of such value for the knowledge of the different branches of the German race.
Sergi.
Professor Sergi at one time proposed to banish measurements from craniology, and to rely solely on observational methods. He has later modified his extreme position, while, as a result of his crusade, he has induced most anthropologists to pay more attention to the configuration of the skull, and some of his descriptive terms have come into common use.
Hagen’s Criticism of Craniometry.