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Book of the Month

Anatomy of a Pygmy - November/ December 2003

Edward Tyson. Orang-outang, sive, Homo sylvestris: or, The anatomy of a pygmie compared with that of a monkey, an ape, and a man. London: printed for Thomas Bennet... and Daniel Brown , 1699. [Rare Books Collection QM21.T9]

Edward Tyson. The anatomy of a Pygmy compared with that of a monkey, an ape and a man. Second Edition. London : Printed for T. Osborne, 1751. [ St. Thomas's Historical Collection S2 c. 7 and Rare Books Collection QL805. TYS]

References: Wing T3598 (1699 edition) ESTC t102302 (1751 edition).

by Hugh Cahill, Senior Information Assistant, Foyle Special Collections Library

Book of the month archive

Title-page of : Edward Tyson, The anatomy of a Pygmy compared with that of a monkey, an ape and a man. Second Edition. London : Printed for T. Osborne, 1751.

The pygmy of the title of this important book was not a man but was in fact an infant chimpanzee from Angola. The chimpanzee in question had died a few months after its arrival in London in 1698. Its death was the result of an infection to a wound contracted after an accident aboard ship on its voyage to England. Edward Tyson's description of the dissection of its corpse and the conclusions he drew from this examination form a book which is important both in the history of comparative anatomy and in the history of primateology. It is a forgotten classic of biology.

However, before any discussion of Tyson and his work some attention must be given to the nomenclature that Tyson used. "Pygmy" was used in the title as Tyson was convinced that the pygmies and other races, such as satyrs, mentioned by the classical authors were not men but apes. He outlines this theory in an essay appended to the main work. Other terms he uses may confuse the modern reader also. Orang-utan means a "man of the forest" in Malay and was used at this time as a generic term for the larger primates. The term "ape" was used in a different way too. It was generally applied to tailless Old World monkeys such as macaques but it is generally used today to describe gibbons, chimpanzees, gorillas and the orang-utan.

Edward Tyson was born in 1650 in Clevedon, Somerset. In 1667 he went to Oxford and graduated B.A. in 1670 and M.A. in 1673 and subsequently took the degree of MD at Cambridge. In 1679 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and in 1683 he became one of the two curators of the Royal Society who were responsible for organising demonstrations at meetings and was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. The following year was also eventful, as he was made the Ventera reader in anatomy at Surgeons Hall and was appointed physician to the Bridewell and Bethlehem hospitals. Despite a busy medical practice Tyson found time for scientific investigation.

External appearance of "Pygmy" from: Edward Tyson. The anatomy of a Pygmy compared with that of a monkey, an ape and a man. Second Edition. London : Printed for T. Osborne, 1751.

He wrote extensively on zootomy and published a number of important works on this subject, including, Phocaena, or, The Anatomy of a Porpess (really a dolphin) (1680), which was the most complete description of a cetacean to that time. In the Anatomy of a Porpess he outlined his ideas on the importance of comparative anatomy and outlined a proposal for a natural history of animals. He believed that before such a work could be started a great deal of detailed description and observation of various animals would have to take place. Furthermore, he believed that such a project would have to start with good descriptions of representative animals to serve as points of comparison for similar creatures. He hoped that his Anatomy of a Porpess would serve as a model for others. Over the course of his life Tyson dissected many different species and frequently published accounts of his dissections in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. His published works including papers on the anatomy of the musk hog and the rattlesnake, male and female opossums, and accounts of dissections of lumbricus teres - the tapeworm - and lumbricus hydropicus or hyatid, which he showed not to be simply a morbid growth but an animal.

However, it is for the publication of his dissection of an immature chimpanzee that he is most remembered. He was helped in this work by William Cowper (1666-1709), the author of Myotomia Reformata (1694). It was Cowper who produced the magnificent plates that illustrated the text and he also provided the chapter on the muscles. It is also probable that it was Cowper who mounted the skeleton of the chimpanzee after the dissection was finished. In Anatomy of a Pygmy Tyson compares the anatomy of the infant chimpanzee to the human anatomy and to the anatomy of monkeys and apes (macaques). Tyson used a number of authorities for comparative material but relied most heavily on an English translation of Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des animaux by Claude Perrault. Tyson's anatomical description was systematic, thorough and accurate. After he had thoroughly described the specimen Tyson listed the main morphological differences and similarities between man and the specimen and between the specimen and monkeys. His investigations led Tyson to the conclusion that what he was examining was neither a variety of human or a monkey but that "Our Pygmie is no man , nor yet the Common Ape; but a sort of animal between both". Of course, as Ashley Montague has pointed out, Tyson was comparing an infant chimpanzee with an adult human and some of the items in his list are not genuine morphological likenesses or differences but are due to differences in age. Despite these problems Anatomy of a Pygmy was important in a number of respects. In this work Tyson initiated the study of hominoid apes and established that his "pygmy" was neither man nor monkey but was a separate species. No study as extensive as this was made of a hominoid ape until Peter Camper described the orang-utan in 1778-1782. Not only was it a seminal work in primateology but because of its thoroughness and its systematic method it provided a firm basis for the study of man and his relationship with the other primates and set an example for others to follow . In Evidence as to Man's place in nature (1863) T.H. Huxley described its importance thus :

it is to ... Tyson and his coadjutor Cowper that we owe the first account of a man-like ape which has any pretensions to scientific accuracy and completeness. The treatise ... is, indeed, a work of remarkable merit, and has in some respects served as a model to subsequent inquirers.

The skeleton of the "Pygmy" from: Edward Tyson. The anatomy of a Pygmy compared with that of a monkey, an ape and a man. Second Edition. London : Printed for T. Osborne, 1751.

By good fortune the skeleton of the unfortunate chimpanzee has survived. It passed through the generations of the Tyson family until it was deposited, on loan, to the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London in 1820. It was reclaimed in 1821 and sometime before 1863 the husband of one of Tyson's great great-grandnieces, Dr. James Allardyce, gave it to Cheltenham Hospital, which in 1894 gave it to the British Museum. It is still to be seen on display in the Natural History Museum, London to this day.

The Foyle Special collections Library has a copy of the first edition (1699) [Rare Books Collection QM21.T9] and two copies of the second edition (1751) [Rare Books Collection QL805. TYS and St. Thomas's Historical Collection S2 c. 7 ] of Anatomy of a Pygmy. According to K.F. Russell in his British anatomy, 1525-1800, this latter edition is made up of the sheets of the 1699 issue with a new title page and the addition of 78 pages of new material and eight additional plates. This edition is particularly interesting as it brings together some of Tyson's other works, such as his rattlesnake and musk hog dissections and accounts of some of his medical cases.

Tyson should not just be remembered as a comparative anatomist and founder of primateology. He made a number of significant contributions to medicine. He published extensively on medical matters in the Philosophical Transactions and Thomæ Bartholini Acta Medica et Philosophica Hafniensia. He discovered the 'Tyson Glands', which are the sebaceous glands of the corona glandis and inner surface of the prepuce, which produces smegma. He was the first to do purposeful post-mortem examinations in England as he believed that by investigating the remains of those who had died of diseases with certain symptoms, the causes of such diseases might be established and ways found to cure them. Tyson's description of the suprarenal glands in children and his comparison of them with those of adults helped establish the idea that children were not simply smaller versions of adults. Tyson was an able, progressive and humane hospital administrator who introduced female nurses to the Bethlehem Hospital, established an outpatients clinic so that former patients could return for free treatment and medicines and instituted a system of post-institutional care where former patients were followed up to help them avoid relapse.

Tyson died suddenly in 1708 at the age of 57. His funeral was not only attended by the lumanaries of the scientific and medical worlds, such as Hans Sloane, William Cowper, Richard Waller and Henry Hunt, but also by the patients he had cared for. Tyson and his work deserve to be rescued from the obscurity into which they have fallen, for not only was he the father of comparative anatomy in England and the founder of primateology but his work influenced many other significant men of science, such as John Ray, J.F. Blumenbach and Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon.

Further reading

F. J. Cole. A history of comparative anatomy : from Aristotle to the Eighteenth Century. London : Macmillan, 1944. [St Thomas' Hospital Library
WZQS11 COL]

M. F. Ashley Montague.Edward Tyson, M.D., F.R.S., 1650-1708, and the rise of human and comparative anatomy in England. Philadelphia : American Philosophical Society, 1943. [Institute of Psychiatry AK3 Mon]

Kenneth F. Russell. British anatomy, 1525-1800 : a bibliography of works published in Britain, America and on the continent. Winchester : St Paul's Bibliographies , 1987. [St Thomas' WZQS11 RUS]

Charles Coulston Gillispie ed. Dictionary of scientific biography , Vol.14 . New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1976. [Maughan Library Round Reading Room Q141. D56]

Also of interest

J.F. Blumenbach. A short history of comparative anatomy. London: printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees,& Orme, 1807. [St. Thomas's Historical Collection 16 c.12]

Bernhard Siegfried Albinus. Oration inauguralis de anatome comparata. Leiden: H. Mulhaus, 1719. [ St. Thomas's Historical Collection 21. c. 8(c)]

Samuel Collins. A system of anatomy, treating of the body of man, beasts, birds, fish, insects, and plants : illustrated with many schemes, consisting of variety of elegant figures, drawn from the life ... And after every part of man's body hath been anatomically described, its diseases, cases, and cures are concisely exhibited. In the Savoy [London]: Printed by Thomas Newcomb, 1685. [KCSMD Historical Collection FOL. QL804. COL]

William Cowper. Myotomia Reformata . London: printed or R. Knaplock, W& J Innys 7 J. Tonson, 1724. [St. Thomas's Historical Collection 7 i. 6]

Busick Harwood. A system of comparative anatomy and physiology. Vol. 1.. Cambridge : printed by J. Burges; and sold by W.H. Lunn and J. Deighton; Messrs. White, and J. Walter; and J. Cook, 1796.Foyle Special Collections [KCSMD Historical Collection FOL. QL805. HAR]

Thomas Henry Huxley. Evidence as to man's place in nature. London : Williams and Norgate, 1863. [KCSMD Historical Collection GN281. HUX]

St. George Jackson Mivart. Man and apes : an exposition of structural resemblances and differences bearing upon questions of affinity and origin London : Robert Hardwicke, 1873. [Early Science Collection QH366. M7]

Richard Owen. Memoir on the gorilla (Troglodytes Gorilla, Savage). London : Printed by Taylor and Francis, 1865 [Early Science Collection FOL. QL737.P96 ] OWE]

Claude Perrault. The natural history of animals ... English'd by R.W.[ Richard Waller]. Lonon: printed for R. Smith, 1702. [Rare Books Collection FOL. QL805. Ac12]