Two unpublished essays on the Anthropology of North America by Benjamin Smith Barton.

Abstract

As far as I can ascertain, two anthropological essays-one on the "Natural History of the North American Indians" and the other on the albino-written by Benjamin Smith Barton while attending medical school at Edinburgh University (1786-1788), have never been described.' To obviate any misunderstanding, it appears that these "dissertations" were not written to support the acquisition of an earned degree, but rather they were scientific communications to the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh, to which Barton had been affiliated during his brief sojourn in that city. For, as Jefferies has indicated,2 Barton did not receive an M.D. degree from either Edinburgh or Gottingen, as is so often reported in the literature. Following a four-page introduction, the first essay is divided into two sections: one which deals with the question of the origins of the North American Indian, the second a brief discourse on human variation, with specific reference to the "Esquimaux." While the ideas expressed in this essay are by no means unique, they are nevertheless of considerable intrinsic interest. Though Charles Caldwell (1772-1853), the famed physician-phrenologist, later held the opinion that the "intellectual efforts and performances" of physicians in Philadelphia "possessed much more of a colonial than a national spirit,"3 it is possible