ABSTRACT
James Cowles Prichard was a physician and anthropologist who made a major contribution to the appreciation that all humans are part of a single species. As a child, Prichard was educated at home and raised as a Quaker. He remained devoutly Christian throughout his life but converted to Anglicanism. Prichard’s best-known work, however, was in the emerging discipline of ethnology, the study of the human race. He was a prominent member of the Ethnological Society, including serving as its president. His thesis that humanity is part of a single species, rather than made up of separate races, was in line with Darwinian evolutionary theory in applying the idea of ‘natural selection’ to how we have evolved. This view is made evident in the following extract, by his citing the examples of the divergent physical appearances of Eskimos and Namibians.
