THE 



EDINBURGH NEW 



PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 



Biographical Sketch of James Cowles Prichard, M.D., F.R.S., 

 Corresponding Member of the Institute of France, ^c, late 

 President of the Ethnological Society, and Author of "Re- 

 searches into the Physical History of Man. ^' By THOMAS 

 HODGKIN, M.D.* 



James Cowles Prichard was born on the 11th of 2d month 

 (Feb.) 1786, at Ross, in Herefordshire, where his family had 

 resided for several generations. His parents were members 

 of the Society of Friends, and in its principles he was himself 

 educated. After the usual preliminary school education he 

 made choice of the medical profession, in which he was in- 

 structed in the London Hospitals, and afterwards in the Uni- 

 versity of Edinburgh, where he took his medical degree ; the 

 subject of his Thesis being the Physical History of Man. In 

 1810 he settled at Bristol as a physician. There, towards the 

 close of the year 1813, he brought out the first edition of his 

 celebrated work, " On the Physical History of Man." The 

 views which he had at that time adopted, and the scope em- 

 braced by this work, the extension of which in subsequent 

 editions occupied so large a portion of his attention, and 

 justly procured him universal reputation, cannot be better 

 stated that in the Doctor's own words : — 



" The nature and causes of the physical diversities which 

 characterize different races of men, though a curious and in- 

 teresting subject of inquiry, is one which has rarely engaged 

 the notice of writers of our own country. The few English 

 authors who have treated of it, at least those who have entered 



* Road at the Meeting of the Ethnological Society, on the 28th February 1849. 

 VOL. XLVII. NO. XCIV. — OCTOBER 1849. P 



