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Title: A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients

Author: Edward Tyson

Release Date: July 8, 2004 [eBook #12850]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHILOLOGICAL ESSAY CONCERNING THE PYGMIES OF THE ANCIENTS***

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A PHILOLOGICAL ESSAY CONCERNING THE PYGMIES OF THE ANCIENTS

By

EDWARD TYSON

Now Edited, with an Introduction by Bertram C. A. Windle

TO MY DEAR MOTHER

PREFATORY NOTE

It is only necessary for me to state here, what I have mentioned in the Introduction, that my account of the habits of the Pigmy races of legend and myth makes no pretence of being in any sense a complete or exhaustive account of the literature of this subject. I have contented myself with bringing forward such tales as seemed of value for the purpose of establishing the points upon which I desire to lay emphasis.

I have elsewhere expressed my obligations to M. De Quatrefage's book on Pigmies, obligations which will be at once recognised by those familiar with that monograph. To his observations I have endeavoured to add such other published facts as I have been able to gather in relation to these peoples.

I have to thank Professors Sir William Turner, Haddon, Schlegel, Brinton, and Topinard for their kindness in supplying me with information in response to my inquiries on several points.

Finally, I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor Alexander Macalister, President of the Anthropological Institute, and to Mr. E. Sidney Hartland, for their kindness in reading through, the former the first two sections, and the latter the last two sections of the Introduction, and for the valuable suggestions which both have made. These gentlemen have laid me under obligations which I can acknowledge, but cannot repay.

BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE.

MASON COLLEGE,

BIRMINGHAM, 1894.

INTRODUCTION

I.

Edward Tyson, the author of the Essay with which this book is concerned, was, on the authority of Monk's Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, born, according to some accounts, at Bristol, according to others, at Clevedon, co. Somerset, but was descended from a family which had long settled in Cumberland. He was educated at Magdalene Hall, Oxford, as a member of which he proceeded Bachelor of Arts on the 8th of February 1670, and Master of Arts on the 4th of November 1673. His degree of Doctor of Medicine he took at Cambridge in 1678 as a member of Corpus Christi College. Dr. Tyson was admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians on the 30th of September 1680, and a Fellow in April 1683. He was Censor of the College in 1694, and held the appointments of Physician to the Hospitals of Bridewell and Bethlem, and of Anatomical Reader at Surgeons' Hall. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and contributed several papers to the "Philosophical Transactions." Besides a number of anatomical works, he published in 1699 "A Philosophical Essay concerning the Rhymes of the Ancients," and in the same year the work by which his name is still known, in which the Philological Essay which is here reprinted finds a place. Tyson died on the 1st of August 1708, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and is buried at St. Dionis Backchurch. He was the original of the Carus not very flatteringly described in Garth's "Dispensary."

The title-page of the work above alluded to runs as follows:—

Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris:

OR, THE ANATOMY OF A PYGMIE

Compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man.

To which is added, A PHILOLOGICAL ESSAY Concerning the Pygmies, the Cynocephali, the Satyrs, and Sphinges of the ANCIENTS.

Wherein it will appear that they are all either APES or MONKEYS, and not MEN, as formerly pretended.

By EDWARD TYSON M.D.

Fellow of the Colledge of Physicians, and the Royal Society: Physician to the Hospital of Bethlem, and Reader of Anatomy at Chirurgeons-Hall.

LONDON:

Printed for Thomas Bennet at the Half-Moon in St. Paul's Church-yard; and Daniel Brown at the Black Swan and Bible without Temple-Bar and are to be had of Mr. Hunt at the Repository in Gresham-Colledge. M DC XCIX.

It bears the authority of the Royal Society:—

17° Die Maij, 1699.

Imprimatur Liber cui Titulus, Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris, &c.
Authore Edvardo Tyson, M.D. R.S.S.

JOHN HOSKINS, V.P.R.S.

The Pygmy described in this work was, as a matter of fact, a chimpanzee, and its skeleton is at this present moment in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. Tyson's granddaughter married a Dr. Allardyce, who was a physician of good standing in Cheltenham. The "Pygmie" formed a somewhat remarkable item of her dowry. Her husband presented it to the Cheltenham Museum, where it was fortunately carefully preserved until, quite recently, it was transferred to its present position.

At the conclusion of the purely scientific part of the work the author added four Philological Essays, as will have appeared from his title-page. The first of these is both the longest and the most interesting, and has alone been selected for republication in this volume.

This is not the place to deal with the scientific merit of the main body of Tyson's work, but it may at least be said that it was the first attempt which had been made to deal with the anatomy of any of the anthropoid apes, and that its execution shows very conspicuous ability on the part of its author.

Tyson, however, was not satisfied with the honour of being the author of an important morphological work; he desired to round off his subject by considering its bearing upon the, to him, wild and fabulous tales concerning pigmy races. The various allusions to these races met with in the pages of the older writers, and discussed in his, were to him what fairy tales are to us. Like modern folk-lorists, he wished to explain, even to euhemerise them, and bring them into line with the science of his day. Hence the "Philological Essay" with which this book is concerned. There are no pigmy races, he says; "the most diligent enquiries of late into all the parts of the inhabited world could never discover any such puny diminutive race of mankind." But there are tales about them, "fables and wonderful and merry relations, that are transmitted down to us concerning them," which surely require explanation. That explanation he found in his theory that all the accounts of pigmy tribes were based upon the