Dissertation Physique de Mr. Pierre Camper, sur les Differences Reelles que Presentent les Traits du Visage Chez les Hommes de Differents Pays et de Differents Ages; sur le Beau qui Caracterise les Statues Antiques et les Pierres Gravees. Suivie de la Proposition d'Une Nouvelle Methode pour Dessiner Toutes Sortes de Tetes Humaines avec la Plus Grande Surete, Publie Apres le Deces de l'Auteur par Son Fils Adrien Gilles Camper, Traduite du Hollandois par Denis Bernard Quatremere d'Isjonval. [Physical Dissertation, on the Real Differences Presented in the Features of the Face in Men of Different Countries and Different Ages; on the beauty that characterizes ancient statues and engraved stones. Followed by the proposal of a new method of drawing all kinds of human heads with the greatest confidence. Published after the death of the author by his son Adrien Gilles Camper, translated from the Dutch by Denis Bernard Quatremere d'Isjonval]

Utrecht: B. Wild & J. Altheer, 1791. First French edition.

1791 LANDMARK THEORY OF CRANIOMETRY BY DUTCH PHYSICIAN, LINKING SPECIES AND RACES, ILLUSTRATED WITH FINE FOLDING ENGRAVINGS.

23x27 cm; quarto, original limp paper-covered boards, ink hand-lettered title to spine, 1x1.5 cm paper label bottom of spine. Decorative bookplate of Charles Atwood Kofoid to front paste-down, bookplate of Robert L Chevalier to front free endpaper, untrimmed edges. viii, 114, [2] pp., 9 folding copper plates, 1 folding diagram. Wear to cover edges, 1.5 cm inkblot to bottom of front cover, faint perforated library stamp to title page, small number hand stamp bottom of following page, otherwise unmarked pages with bright clean plates. Very good minus, now in 19th century blue rubbed quarter cloth slipcase with gilt title to spine and cloth-covered folder, in custom archival mylar cover.

GARRISON-MORTON No. 158 for the German edition of 1792 (first published in Dutch in 1791).

PETRUS CAMPER (1722 - 1789), was a Dutch physician, anatomist, physiologist, midwife, zoologist, anthropologist, paleontologist and a naturalist. He was the son of a local well-to-do minister, who made his fortune in the East Indies. As a brilliant alumnus, he studied in the University of Leiden, earning degrees in both medicine and philosophy at the age of 24. He was offered sundry professorships, being first named professor of philosophy, anatomy and surgery in 1750 at the University of Franeker. Beginning in 1755, he occupied a chair of anatomy, medicine and surgery at the Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam, and later moved to the University of Groningen. He investigated the anatomy of eight orangutans, and claimed it was a different species from the human being, and not simply a "degenerate" type of (white) human, as some contemporary scientists theorized. In his 1778 lecture, "On the Points of Similarity between the Human Species, Quadrupeds, Birds, and Fish; with Rules for Drawing, founded on this Similarity," he metamorphosed a horse into a human being, thus showing the similarity between all vertebrates. Camper is best known for his theory of the "facial angle" originally in connection with two lectures he gave in Amsterdam in 1770 to art students on beauty and portraiture. He determined that modern humans had facial angles between 70° and 80°, with African and Asian angles closer to 70°, and European angles closer to 80. According to his new portraiture technique, an angle is formed by drawing two lines: one horizontally from the nostril to the ear; and the other perpendicularly from the advancing part of the upper jawbone to the most prominent part of the forehead. His theory that intelligence is proportional to the facial angle was later used to justify racism, slavery and genocide.

PROVENANCE: CHARLES ATWOOD KOFOID (1865 - 1947) was an American zoologist known for his collection and classification of many new species of marine protozoans which established marine biology on a systematic basis. A faculty member of the University of California, Berkeley he was an early advocate for the development of a marine station in La Jolla that would later become the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.