Morton, SAMUEL GEORGE

Morton, SAMUEL GEORGE, an American physician, born in Philadelphia, January 26, 1799, studied medicine there and at Edinburgh, and in 1839 was appointed professor of Anatomy in the Pennsylvania Medical College. He died May 15, 1861. Morton may be regarded as the first American who endeavoured to place the doctrine of the original diversity of mankind on a scientific basis. His great works are Crania Americana (1839) and Crania Egyptica (4 vols. 1844); and his museum of comparative craniology, preserved at Philadelphia, contains some 1500 skulls—900 of them human.