The Natural History of Man, 1855

Prichard, James Cowles, M.D., F.R.S., M.R.I.A. Editor of 4th ed., Edwin Norris. The Natural History of Man; Comprising Inquiries into the Modifying Influence of Physical and Moral Agencies on the Different Tribes of the Human Family. London: H. Bailliere, 1855, 2 vols. 8vo, rebound in 3/4 leather over marbled paper, light green endpapers; [x], 343pp (vol. 1); vii, pp 344-720 (vol. II). Vol. 1 color frontis, "A Man of the Tuda Race;" Vol. II color frontis, "A Woman of the Tuda Race."

As was the case with many men of earlier centuries, James Prichard was a man of many interests. Born to Quaker parents in 1786, he went on to become a physician, eventually specializing in psychiatry, having worked his way through apprenticeships in apothecary and surgery, obstetrics, before entering medical school at Edinburgh University. He was also an early influence in anthropology, with interests in ethnology and physical anthropology. He even traced relationships among languages of the world, linking Celtic languages into the Indo-European family. It was through this interest that he published this examination of the roots of human diversity. He dedicated his work to Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the "Father" of physical anthroplogy, and the one to whom the classic division of humans into five major "races" is credited. He accepted evolution as the reason why a species with a single origin became so diverse, and came (along with a few others) very close to crediting natural selection as the mechanism of this diversity.

In his specialty of psychiatry, he wrote much on "Insanity and Other Disorders of the Mind," and was the first to define senile dementia in the English medical literature. In 1845 he was appointed one of three Commissioners in Lunacy and moved to London, where he died three years later of rheumatic fever.

Occasional minor discoloration of text block. Still very good, with clean pages.

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