Samuel George Morton

Samuel George Morton (January 26, 1799 – May 15, 1851) was an American physician, naturalist, and writer. As one of the early figures of scientific racism, he argued against monogenism, the single creation story of the Bible, instead supporting polygenism, a theory of multiple racial creations.

He was a prolific writer of books on various subjects from 1823 to 1851. He wrote Geological Observations in 1828, and both Synopsis of the Organic Remains of the Cretaceous Group of the United States and Illustrations of Pulmonary Consumption in 1834. His first medical essay, on the use of cornine in intermittent fever was published in the Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences in 1825. His bibliography includes Hybridity in Animals and Plants (1847), Additional Observation on Hybridity (1851), and An Illustrated System of Human Anatomy (1849).

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Morton was raised as a Quaker and educated at Westtown School and the University of Pennsylvania, from where he graduated in 1820. He then earned an advanced degree from the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, and began to practice medicine in Philadelphia in 1824. He was one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Medical College in Philadelphia and served as its professor of anatomy from 1839 until his resignation in 1843. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1828 and the American Antiquarian Society in 1844. He is buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia.

Samuel George Morton is often thought of as the originator of "American School" ethnology, a school of thought in antebellum American science that claimed the difference between humans was one of species rather than variety and is seen by some as the origin of scientific racism. Morton claimed the Bible supported polygenism, and working in a biblical framework, his theory stated that each race had been created separately and each was given specific, irrevocable characteristics.

After inspecting three mummies from ancient Egyptian catacombs, Morton concluded that Caucasians and Negroes were already distinct three thousand years ago. Since the Bible indicated that Noah's Ark had washed up on Mount Ararat, Morton claimed that Noah's sons could not possibly account for every race on earth. According to Morton's theory of polygenesis, races have been separate since the start.

Morton claimed that he could define the intellectual ability of a race by the skull capacity. A large volume meant a large brain and high intellectual capacity, and a small skull indicated a small brain and decreased intellectual capacity. He was reputed to hold the largest collection of skulls, on which he based his research. He claimed that each race had a separate origin, and that a descending order of intelligence could be discerned that placed Caucasians at the pinnacle and Negroes at the lowest point, with various other race groups in between. His research of ancient Egyptians was meant to show that this racial hierarchy had always existed and should remain in place. When confronted with evidence that many ancient Egyptians had dark skin like other Africans, Morton used skull measurements to corroborate the words of Georges Curvier: "whatever may have been the hue of their skin, they belonged to the same race with ourselves." Aside from this occasionally dark-skinned Caucasian ruling class, Morton's skull measurements led him to admit "Negroes were numerous in Egypt but their social position in ancient times was the same that it now is, that of servants and slaves." Morton's scholarship greatly contributed to Egyptology and several other disciplines adopting the Hamitic Hypothesis, the idea that civilization is antithetical to Negroes and a legacy of the Caucasian race such that any evidence of civilization in Africa must have derived from Caucasian presence or influence. Morton's skull collection was held at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia until 1966, when it was transferred to the Penn Museum, where it is presently curated.

Morton's theories were very popular in his day, and he was a highly respected physician and scientist. The anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička called Morton "the father of American physical anthropology". Crispin Bates has noted that Morton's "systematic justification" for the separation of races, along with the work of Louis Agassiz, was also used by those who favoured slavery in the United States, with the Charleston Medical Journal noting at his death that "We of the South should consider him as our benefactor for aiding most materially in giving to the negro his true position as an inferior race."

Morton claimed in his Crania Americana that the Caucasians had the biggest brains, averaging 87 cubic inches (1,426 cc), Indians were in the middle with an average of 80 cubic inches (1,344 cc) and Negroes had the smallest brains with an average of 78 cubic inches (1,278 cc). Morton believed that the skulls of each race were so different that a wise creator from the beginning had created each race and positioned them in separate homelands to dwell in.