Created by Karl Pearson
1909
Description:

Lecture on Albinism in Man I (c.1909).

‘The supplies to the joint circular of Mr Nettleship & myself were fairly copious and in conjunction with the literature we have been able to engrave nearly 600 pedigrees of albinotic human stocks covering upwards of 1500 cases of albinism in every variety of race and almost every land.’ (f.2)

In highlighting the most prominent contributors to the study: ‘I would refer [especially] to the excellent photographic work of Dr. G.A. Turner of Johannesburg among the Mytopi[?] and Kaffir boys. This is of peculiar interest as showing the transition of the negro to blondism [sic], to partal and ultimately to complete albinism. There have been many others to whom we owe much aid...’ (f.3)

‘In India the albino may have been an outcaste, refused the customary rites on death; in South Africa, he may be treated as unlucky & other “boys” refuse to work with him; but in Loango & parts of Western Africa, we find him the chosen confident [sic] of kings, the purist, the man who may take from any one what he needs or pleases without fear of opposition for as the negroes say “God has created the albino but like the white not like the black in order that he may live without work.”’ (f.3)

‘I think there is some evidence to prove that albinism is more frequent now-a-days than it could have been in the 18^th century. Pilgrimages to see individual albinos, learned monographs before scientific societies and papers in the medical journals reporting the discovery of new cases are hardly possible in the 20^th century, and I am inclined to think that the relative frequency of albinism in Europe now is greater than it was a few centuries ago. There is, I believe, a considerable correlation between at least one group of albinos and marked physical delicacy, and in this case the lessening of the intensity of the struggle for existence has notably increased the frequency of other less robust types of man. White animals, Lord Bacon has told us, were in his day dis-allowed by the agriculturist and the breeder on account of their delicacy and at present the white shorthorn cattle finds its way first into the meat market.’ (f.5)

Albinism not noticed until the slave trade: ‘Europe got excited about albinism owing to the discovery of white and piebald negroes. The capture of negroes for slaves in Africa and the breeding of slaves in America led to the discovery that the Ethiopian can change his skin. Slave owners were startled by some of their negroes going white in patches which spread until the whole body, hair and skin became as white as in the case of a European. This change in the bulk of cases is accompanied by no pain, and is not confined to the negro; we find it in the European, the Asiatic and the Arab as well. It is termed by the medical profession leucoderma, and has been supposed to be a pathological condition or disease acquired during life. The existence of piebald negroes and whites has been attributed by some to leucoderma. The inheritance, however, of the piebald condition, and the birth of persons with congenital white patches is much against this hypothesis.’ (f.6)

‘The transition from ‘complete’ albinism to partial albinism is so gradual that there is the utmost difficulty in stating where the line is to be drawn. There is no definite test which has yet been applied to determine whether the skin is or is not definitely free of pigment. The hair of nearly all human albinos shows diffused pigment. A sweeping statement that [13-14] the hair of albinos is ‘white’ is simply misleading.’ (ff.13-14)

‘I want to emphasis the fact that there is almost every grade of albinism, and this not only in intensity, but in the extent to which it affects the whole of the skin, the hair or the eyes.’ (f.15)

‘It is not certain... at present, to what extent these [aforementioned] native albinos with black pupils & blue or gray eyes, are albinotic so far as the pigmentation of the various parts of the eye is concerned. What is certain is that they form a remarkable contrast to their racial fellows; they very often exhibit little or no photophobia or nystagmus, and the skin is as white and as little unpleasant as that of a European child. The bearing of this class of albinos on certain race problems seems to me to have been too much disregarded. It wanted, I believe, a large collection of photographs, such as we have now brought together to get some real insight into the problem.

Let me put it to you from the historical standpoint. The white man distinguishes himself fundamentally by colour from the black man. The black man was a being of a different order who might be treated as chattel. The fundamental distinction was not – as it might have been [-] of intelligence – but one of skin. A black slave was possible, but not a white. The appearance of white offspring to black parents was a phenomenon which created very great excitement [18-19] and curiosity throughout Europe. Not a little of this took in pre-Darwinian days a strange theological form. There were grave discussions as to whether Adam was black or white, just as there were such discussions as to whether Hebrew was his tongue. There was no second Tower of Babel to account for difference of colour. How did a portion of the progeny of Adam become copper-coloured and black? The discovery of the negro-albino came as a revelation. The birth of a white child to negro parents was a demonstration that the original Adam was white, such cases were to be put down as a statistic; as reversions on the part of the negro to his original type. The philosopher Maupertius discusses this problem at some length, and settles in favour of white Adam, laying stress on the white reversions in the negro race. The Abbé Demanet[?] wrote a long dissertation in 1767 to prove that Adam & Eve were white & that there were no black or red men before the deluge, because no one had wandered into torrid zones. After the Tower of Babel man scattered & moved into hot climates, which altered the skin colour, and the mothers by flattening their children’s noses & so forth gave them the acquired [19-20] peculiarities which we see in the dark races as inherited characters. The appearance of the white negro is a sufficient proof that black is only a hereditary variety of white. The whole discussion is sufficiently amusing, but there is in all seriousness a real problem behind it all, summed up in the human desire for unity & simplicity of origin. In post-Darwinian times are we to look upon the three fundamental types of man as evolved at three different times or centres, and if so form a common proto-type or not? Was the man-like ancestor in skin colour nearer to the white, the copper, or the black races? How if that ancestor had originally something approaching a white or a copper skin might we not anticipate that white & other races would occasionally “mutate” in the black direction? We know that partial albinism in the black & copper races presents us over and over again with skins which alone could hardly be differentiated from the European.’ (18-20)

‘I think we may safely say that no evidence will be easily found free of suspicion which shows the birth of black offspring to white parents. To my mind this does not indicate that white is the original skin colour of a manlike ancestor, it seems to me to point to loss of colour as a possible mutation in a coloured race, and that if we have to look for a single origin of the human race, the manlike ancestor must have had a dark skin, one far more like the negro than the European white. This seems [22-23] consonant also with what we know of white animals which are scarcely the primary types of the races in which they appear.

Poesche[?] emphasising the Baconian view of the delicacy of white animals has also deduced the white man from the dark. He looks upon blondism as a disease acquired by the present European races in coming westward from Asia in the swamps of Russia – presumably the inheritance of an acquired character. I do not see that we gain anything by terming any form of albinism pathological, unless we mean to assert that complete albinism is a great hindrance to healthy enjoyment of life under our existing environment. But the possibility of a wide range of pigment variation occurring in the black races from the dead white of the albino, to the rosy white of the European, to the copper of the oriental and to the red of the Indian appears indisputable; and this range of variants does not occur in the white or copper races of man. It seems a reasonable hypothesis therefore that the manlike ancestors of man were closer to the negro in colour than to the dark races. “Can the [23-24] Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?” Surely the answer must be yes, if we start from the knowledge of the white negro, and bear in mind the evolution from earlier types. The xanthous negress, the partial albinos of the dark races are after all, perhaps, of more importance than the white hedgehog or albino weasel of the museums; they may not be merely passing sports, the playthings of the monograph writers and the stock in trade of the showman. They may possibly indicate the line of descent, which our own ancestry has followed. Darwin believed that the skin colour of the races of mankind has arisen by sexual selection. He speaks of the jet-blackness of the negro being gained by sexual selection (Descent of Man, p. 604). He is not very definite on the point as to what measure of lightness the manlike being had from which the races of man were differentiated by sexual selection. I throw out the suggestion that the “subhuman” had a dark skin, whose variants towards albinism have given us the copper and European races. The white man may be an offshoot of a negroid ‘subhuman’, but the negro as obtained [24-25] by sexual selection [24-25] from a white ancestry seems to me wholly improbable. Those intermediate links between dark skinned races and their complete albinos, those stages which I have endeavoured to show you are congenital & inherited, those cases of partial albinism, which the superficial student of living forms may pass by as merely pathological and of no moment, may, I suggest, be the key which unlocks one puzzle, as to the possibly unique origin of the races of man.’

 

Lecture on Albinism in Man II:

‘Whether the offspring of two human albinos would always be an albino we do not know. It might mean that some generations of selection were needful to establish a race of albino men. With two albinos each born of non-albinotic parents give albinotic offspring, Mr. Nettleship has the extreme good fortune, and, if I may say so, the anxious responsibility of being the owner of three albino dogs. If he can create a race of albino dogs he will have added much to our knowledge. Still greater bearing on the case of man might be deduced from the story of the albino monkeys, complete typical albinos, which used to be preserved in the stalls of the less complete albino elephants of Siam. Wide is the range of occurrence in mammals and birds... [3-4]... but... it is but rarely that an albino breed has been established.... The white mouse & the white rat have survived as domesticated races, but would they have done so in wild life?’ (ff.3-4)

Re: difficulty of differentiating races on basis of their colour/hair/skeletal characteristics: ‘Cranial characters are again very difficult. A series of negro skulls can be distinguished at once from a series of European skulls, but there are no definite craniometric tests by which the negro skull can be at once separated from a mixture. Quite recently a distinguished anatomist gave such tests, but applying them to a large collection of English skulls almost 20 p.c. of the English were demonstrated by this test to be negroes! You cannot be certain of many negroid skulls whether they are certainly negroid or not, although the average characters differ. As a matter of fact, it is a “general appreciation” by which a skull is said to be negroid, and only in very definite cases can we be absolutely certain that a skull picked from a mixed series is negroid. There are many negro skulls which if placed in a European series would pass & many European skulls which if placed in a negro collection would also pass. The craniological differences are not nearly so distinctive as the colour differences, and if the skin can be mutable, the skull need not present itself as an insuperable difficulty in the way of evolution of the white from the black...'