Samuel George Morton, self-styled objective empiricist, amassed the world's largest pre-Darwinian collection of human skulls. He measured their capacity and produced the results anticipated in an age when few Caucasians doubted their innate superiority: whites above Indians, blacks at the bottom. Morton published all his raw data, and it is shown here that his summary tables are based on a patc...

By LISA GREENE Drawers and drawers of skulls. Thai's whal one finds when one enters the storage room in the basement of the University Museum. The museum's Morton Collection is comprised of more than 1000 skulls, and occupies more than half of the storage space in the basement allocated for skeletal collections. Some of ihe skulls are painted, some are mummified. Some belonged to idiots, fanati...

Ahaptoglobinaemia in a sample from northeastern Brazilian was found to be significantly associated with a low hematocrit (Krieger et al, 1965; Morton, Krieger, and Mi, 1966). Further analysis showed no explanation for the association. Individuals with abnormal haemoglobin genotypes SS, SC, and CC were excluded but the association with low hematocrit remained significant (Azevedo, Krieger, and M...

Background The past two decades have seen increasing recognition about the importance and potential of large longitudinal cohort studies, not only for informing our understanding of child development and evidence-based interventions, but also for informing the development and evaluation of government policy and programmes for children and families. In New Zealand, our diverse contemporary longi...