1839

Publication of Samuel Morton’s Crania Americana, which argued that Caucasians had the largest skulls and hence possessed the greatest intellectual capability, where Blacks were the “lowest grade of humanity.”  It “advanced scientific racism and served as a justification for slavery.”  His theories were taken up by Ira Russel and other USSC physicians and used to understand differences in Black and white mortality during the Civil War:  “They applied a polemical theory to help understand a medical crisis.  They upended the growing medical trend to focus on external factors as the cause of disease spread . . .    Unlike their British counterparts, they turned to craniology as part of their so-called sanitary method, infusing a well-established racial tradition into the work of the federal government’s effort to protect the health of soldiers” (Downs, 131).