anthropometry According to James Tanner, formerly Professor of Child Health at the University of London, ‘anthropometry was born not of medicine or science, but of the arts, impregnated by the spirit of Pythagorean philosophy. Painters and sculptors needed instruction about the relative proportions of legs and trunk, shoulders and hips, eyes and forehead, so that they could more easily go about what we might nowadays consider the mundane occupation of making life-like images’. The earliest recorded attempt in the West to study the development of the human form for medical or scientific purposes appears to have been made by the German physician, Johann Sigismund Elsholtz (1623–88), as part of an enquiry into the relationship between body proportions and the incidence of disease. During the nineteenth century, the term ‘anthropometry’ was promoted and popularized by such writers as Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874), Charles Roberts (d. 1901), and Paul Topinard (1830–1911). Topinard defined the study of anthropometry as the systematic measurement of the different parts of the human body in order to determine their respective proportions not only at different ages, but also ‘in the human races, so as to distinguish them and establish their relations to each other’ (quoted in Spencer 1997, p. 80).
As this brief history indicates, the origins of the science of anthropometry can be traced in a number of different ways. One of the earliest spurs to development in the modern era was the study of human growth, as indicated by the famous series of measurements conducted on his son by Count Philibert Guéneau de Montbeillard (1720–1785), and published by Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon (1707–88) in the fourth
Supplement to his
Natural History (1777). The development of anthropometry was also influenced by the development of physical anthropology and the search for evidence of ‘racial’ variations. During the second half of the nineteenth century, several researchers, including the Austrian physician, Karl Scherzer (1821–1903), conducted investigations into the physical measurements of supposedly ‘primitive’ peoples, and the British anthropologist, John Beddoe (1826–1911), assembled information on the height, weight, and other characteristics of the different ‘races’ of the British Isles. The development of anthropometry was also closely bound up with research into the health and physical condition of people living under different social and economic conditions. Tanner quotes the French physician, Louis-René Villermé (1782–1863), as noting that
Human height becomes greater and growth takes place more rapidly, other things beings equal, in proportion as the country is richer, comfort more general, houses, clothes and nourishment better, and labour, fatigue and privation during infancy and youth less; in other words, the circumstances which accompany poverty delay the age at which complete stature is reached and stunt adult height.Although it is important to recognize the scientific reasons for the growth of interest in anthropometry, one should also acknowledge the fact that many of the measurements made of human beings in the past were conducted for more immediate and, perhaps, less exalted reasons. With the exception of skeletal evidence, most of the information which we now possess about the heights of people in the more distant past has come from measurements made of soldiers at the time of recruitment. One of the reasons for measuring soldiers was to discover whether they met the Army's minimum height standards, but other groups, such as convicts, slaves, and indentured servants, were measured so that they could be identified more readily in the event of escape. By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, increasing interest was being shown in the measurement of children. Some of the earliest measurements, such as those made by the British factory surgeons, were designed to establish whether the children were old enough to be employed; others were intended to establish the children's fitness for physical education.
The subject of anthropometry is of considerable interest to historians, not only because of its intellectual importance, but also because of the capacity of anthropometric measurements to shed new light on the health and well-being of past generations. In 1969, the French historian, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (b. 1929), showed that there was a close relationship between the average height of soldiers who were recruited by the French army in 1868, and their level of literacy. This work provided the initial stepping-stone for the development of a new field of historical enquiry, known as anthropometric history, in both Europe and the US. Some of the leading examples of this new field include Robert Fogel's work on the average heights of native-born white males in the US; Richard Steckel's investigations into the heights of American slaves; Roderick Floud, Kenneth Wachter, and Annabel Gregory's examination of the heights of British soldiers; and John Komlos' study of the heights of Austro-Hungarian soldiers under the Hapsburg monarchy.
The investigations conducted by historians, physical anthropologists, human biologists, and others have generated a vast amount of data on the history of human height, weight, and body proportions over the course of the last two centuries. It is now apparent that the average height of human beings in most parts of the world is significantly greater than that of their forebears 100–200 years ago. The extent of these changes is a further indication of the overwhelming importance of social and economic factors in determining average height, and the relatively minor role played by ‘racial’ differences. At the same time, it is also clear that some populations have experienced greater increases in height than others, and that there are still substantial variations in the heights of people living on different parts of the globe. The persistence of these variations highlights the need for further improvements in standards of diet and sanitation in order to ensure that all children have the opportunity to achieve their full growth potential in the future.
Anthropometry in the twentieth century included estimation of the ration of fat to lean body mass — important in the study of
energy balance and
obesity — by measurement of body density or skinfold thicknesses, and more recently by the application of technologies such as
magnetic resonance imaging and radioisotope studies.
Bernard Harris
Bibliography
Eveleth, P. B. and and Tanner, J. M. (1990). Worldwide variation in human growth. Cambridge University Press.
Harris, B. (1994). Health, height and history: an overview of recent developments in anthropometric history. Social History of Medicine, 7, 297–320.
Spencer, F. ed. (1997). History of physical anthropology. Garland, New York and London.
Tanner, J. M. (1981). A history of the study of human growth. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
See also
anthropology;
energy balance;
obesity;
phrenology.
