ANTHROPOLOGY AND SURGERY. 
PLATES 119—140. 
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 
1. Postrion oF MAN IN ORGANIC NATURE. 
Linn. zvs placed man at the head of the animal kingdom, presenting what 
he deemed his most important characteristic, in the specific name Sapzens. 
Other naturalists have expressed themselves quite indignantly against even 
this approximation to the brute creation, denying the propriety of grouping 
man with other Mammalia. Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny that in 
many respects there is a close resemblance to the higher quadrumana im 
many external features, and a still more intimate relation in the fundamental 
points of anatomical and physiological structure. By placing him; in the 
order Bimana, of which he is sole occupant, we make a zoological -differ- 
ence from the monkeys and apes, this difference being vastly increased by 
the presence of intelligence and reason. 
However great the resemblance between Man and the Quadrumana, yet 
the differences, as already remarked, are sufficient to prevent their ever 
being approximated more closely than we have done. Thus, a perfectly op- 
“posable thumb is unknown among the monkey tribe; this member, although 
capable of grasping objects, 1s yet unable to act with the delicacy and pre- 
cision so eminently characteristic in man. The erect attitude, too, is man’s 
sole prerogative; this involving numerous differences in general structure. 
Another point of difference is to be found in the different facial angle; this 
being such as to throw the face immediately beneath the brain, and not 
anterior to it. This facial angle is formed by two ideal lines, one drawn 
from the most projecting portion of the forehead to the anterior extremity 
of the alveolar margin of the upper jaw, the other extending from the latter 
point in a horizontal direction through the meatus auditorius externus. The 
development of brain will generally be found to bear a certain ratio to the 
obtuseness of this angle. Pl. 119, fig. 10, exhibits the facial angle of the 
Kuropean ; fig. 11, that of the negro; and jig. 12, that of the orang-outang. 
Other important characteristics of mankind are to be found in the absence 
of any intervals between contiguous teeth, and in the vertical position of 
‘the latter; in the comparatively small size of the face, the prominent chin, 
the broad foot, the long muscular legs; in his capacity of living under great 
extremes of heat and cold; his adaptation to a purely animal or vegetable 
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