{{short description|American physician (1804–1873)}} {{Infobox person | image = Josiah Clarke Nott.jpg | caption = Nott during the 1860s | birth_name = Josiah Clark Nott | birth_date = {{birth date|1804|03|31|mf=y}} | birth_place = [[South Carolina]], U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|1873|03|31|1804|03|31|mf=y}} | death_place = [[Mobile, Alabama]], U.S. | alma_mater = [[University of Pennsylvania]] | occupation = [[Surgeon]], [[anthropologist]] | spouse = Sarah Cantey Deas (m. 1832) }}
'''Josiah Clark Nott''' (March 31, 1804{{spaced ndash}}March 31, 1873) was an American surgeon, [[anthropology|anthropologist]] and [[ethnology|ethnologist]]. He is known for his studies into the [[etiology (medicine)|etiology]] of [[yellow fever]] and [[malaria]], including [[Germ theory of disease|the theory that they are caused by germs]], and for his espousal of [[scientific racism]].
Nott, who enslaved people, used his scientific reputation to defend the institution of slavery. He claimed that "the negro achieves his greatest perfection, physical and moral, and also greatest longevity, in a state of slavery".<ref> {{citation|last=Dewbury|first=Adam|title=Histories of Anthropology Annual|date=January 2007|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ho55L7Us1jQC&pg=PA141|volume=3|pages=141–142|publisher=U of Nebraska Press |isbn=978-0803266643|editor1-last=Darnell|editor1-first=Regna|contribution=The American School and Scientific Racism in Early American Anthropology|editor2-last=Gleach|editor2-first=Frederic W.}} </ref> Nott was influenced by the racial theories of [[Samuel George Morton]] (1799–1851), one of the inspirators of [[physical anthropology]]. Morton collected hundreds of human skulls from around the world and tried to classify them. Morton had been among the first to claim that he could judge the intellectual capacity of a race by the [[cranial capacity]] (the measure of the volume of the interior of the skull). A large skull meant a large brain and high intellectual capacity, and a small skull indicated a small brain and decreased intellectual capacity. By studying these skulls he came to the conclusion of [[polygenism]], that each race had a separate origin.
==Early life and education== Nott was born on March 31, 1804, in the U.S. state of [[South Carolina]]. He was the son of the [[Federalist Party (United States)|Federalist]] politician and judge [[Abraham Nott]]. He received his medical degree from the [[University of Pennsylvania]] in 1827 and completed his post-graduate training in [[Paris]].<ref name="HCHOF">{{cite web|title=Josiah Clark Nott, M.D. (1804–1873)|work=Alabama Healthcare Hall of Fame|url=http://www.healthcarehof.org/honorees02/nott.html|accessdate=2008-02-20|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080723112221/http://www.healthcarehof.org/honorees02/nott.html|archivedate=2008-07-23}}</ref> He moved to [[Mobile, Alabama]] in 1833 and began a surgical practice.<ref name="HCHOF"/>
==Career== [[File:Races and skulls.png|thumb|220px|Illustration from Indigenous Races of the Earth (1857), whose authors Nott and [[George Gliddon]] implied that "Negroes" were a creational rank between "Greeks" and chimpanzees]] Nott took up the theory that [[malaria]] and [[yellow fever]] were caused by parasitic infections with "[[animalcule]]s" (microorganisms), earlier held by [[John Crawford (physician)|John Crawford]].<ref name="Chernin">{{cite journal |author=Chernin E |title=Josiah Clark Nott, insects, and yellow fever |journal=Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine |volume=59 |issue=9 |pages=790–802 |date=November 1983 |pmid=6140039 |pmc=1911699 }}</ref> In his 1850 ''Yellow Fever Contrasted with Bilious Fever'' he attacked the prevailing [[miasma theory]].
He is often credited as being the first to apply the [[Mosquito-malaria theory|insect vector theory]] to [[yellow fever]], then a serious health problem of the [[American South]].<ref name="HCHOF"/> However, unlike his contemporary [[Louis-Daniel Beauperthuy]], he did not actually go so far as to suggest that mosquitos in fact spread the germs. In fact, he explicitly acknowledged that he did not know how the "animalculae might be communicated through the air or directly to individuals".<ref name="Chernin" />
Nott lost four of his children to yellow fever in one week in September 1853.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Downs|first1=WG|title=Yellow fever and Josiah Clark Nott.|journal=Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine|date=April 1974|volume=50|issue=4|pages=499–508|pmid=4594855|pmc=1749383}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Olivarius |first=Kathryn |title=[[Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom]] |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |year=2022 |isbn=9780674276079 |publication-date=Apr 2022 |pages=237}}</ref>
Nott believed that mixed-race relationships between people of European and African descent would lead to the "probable extermination of the two races" because mulattoes would live shorter lives, be more susceptible to disease, and less fertile — but that more data was needed to prove the claim.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Nott |first1=J. C. |title=The Mulatto a Hybrid — Probable Extermination of the Two Races If the Whites and Blacks Are Allowed to Intermarry |journal=The New England Journal of Medicine |date=16 August 1843 |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=29–32 |doi=10.1056/nejm184308160290201 |url=https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM184308160290201 |access-date=10 January 2025 |language=EN|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Citing Nott's need, [[Kentucky]] Senator [[Joseph R. Underwood]] had the racial category of "mulatto" added to the [[1850 United States census]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Nobles |first1=Melissa |title=Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics |date=2000 |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=978-0-8047-4059-3 |pages=38–43 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QbVfrkLZKiAC&dq=%22The+1849+Congressional+Debates%3A+%22Mulatto%22+and+%22Pure+Races%22%22&pg=PA38 |access-date=10 January 2025 |language=en}}</ref>
Morton's followers, particularly Nott and [[George Gliddon]] (1809–1857) in their monumental tribute to Morton's work, ''Types of Mankind'' (1854), carried Morton's ideas further and claimed and backed up his findings, which supported the notion of [[polygenism]], which claims that humanity originates from different ancestral lineages and is the ancestor of the [[multiregional hypothesis]].
In their book, Nott and Gliddon argued that the races of mankind each occupied distinct zoological provinces and did not originate from a single pair of ancestors; they both believed God had created each race and positioned each race in separate geographic provinces. The doctrine of zoological provinces outlined in ''Types of Mankind'' did not allow for "superiority" of one type of race over another; each type was suited to its own province, and was superior within its own province. At the same time, though, Nott concluded that "Caucasian races . . . are influenced by several causes in a greater degree than other races," including "the largest brains and the most powerful intellect." Similarly, Nott claimed that, because the races were created in different provinces, all races must be of equal antiquity. Here, however, Nott used "race" to signify something "pure and permanent," a distinct and specific "type" that faced "extermination" if "mixed" with another "type." Nott's concept of racial purity greatly informed the twentieth century racial theories employed by the Nazi regime.<ref>{{cite book|author=David Keane|title=Caste-based discrimination in international human rights law|year=2007|pages=91–92}}</ref> Moreover, Nott and other polygenists, such as Gliddon, believed that the name of the biblical [[Adam]] meant "to show red in the face" or "[[blushing|blush]]er" in Hebrew; since supposedly only light-skinned people could blush, the biblical Adam must have been of the [[Caucasian race]].<ref name="Scott Mandelbrote 2010. pp. 151 - 154">{{cite book|author=Scott Mandelbrote|title=Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: 1700–present|volume=2|year=2010|pages=151–154}}</ref>
Nott persistently attacked the scientific basis of the [[Bible]]{{clarification needed|date=March 2025}} and also rejected the [[theory of evolution]] by claiming that the environment does not change any organism into another, and also rejecting [[common descent]]. Nott believed monogenism was "absurd" and had no biblical or scientific basis. He pointed to excavations in Egypt that depicted animals and humans as they looked today to refute monogenism and evolution. According to Nott, the monuments and artifacts found in Egypt proved that the "White, Mongolian and Negro existed at least five thousand years ago." Nott claimed that this proved beyond dispute that each race had been created separately.<ref name="Scott Mandelbrote 2010. pp. 151 - 154"/>
Nott claimed that the writers of the Bible had no knowledge of any races except themselves and their immediate neighbors and that it did not concern the whole of the earth's population. According to Nott, there were no verses in the Bible that support monogenism and that the only passage used by the monogenists, Acts 17:26, "And [he] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;"<ref>{{cite web |title=Acts 17:26 |url=https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Acts-17-26/ |website=kingjamesbibleonline.org |access-date=23 May 2021}}</ref> was interpreted by them wrongly since the "one blood" of Paul's sermon included only the nations that he knew existed, which were local.<ref name="Scott Mandelbrote 2010. pp. 151 - 154"/>
In 1856, Nott hired [[Henry Hotze]] to translate [[Arthur de Gobineau]]'s ''[[An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races]]'' (1853–55), a founding text of "biological racism" that contrasted with [[Henri de Boulainvilliers|Boulainvilliers]] (1658–1722)'s theory of races, and Nott provided an appendix with his most recent results. Gobineau subsequently complained that Hotze's translation had ignored his comments on "American decay generally and slaveholding in particular".<ref> {{citation|title=Henry Hotze, Confederate propagandist: selected writings on revolution ... |first=Lonnie Alexander|last=Burnett|publisher=University of Alabama Press|year=2008|page=5|isbn=9780817316204| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cfGxI_VrR2MC&pg=PA5}} </ref>
In 1857, Nott and Gliddon again co-edited a book, ''Indigenous Races of the Earth''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/stream/indigenousraceso01nott#page/n33/mode/2up|title=Indigenous Races of the Earth (Philadelphia 1857)}}</ref> That book built upon the arguments in ''Types of Mankind'' that linked anthropology with "scientific" studies of race to establish a supposed natural hierarchy of the races. The book included chapters from [[Louis Ferdinand Alfred Maury]], [[J. Atkin Meigs]], and Francis Polszky, letters from [[Louis Agassiz]], Joseph Leidy, and A.W. Habersham.
[[Charles Darwin]] opposed Nott and Gliddon's polygenist and [[creationist]] arguments in his 1871 ''[[The Descent of Man]]'', arguing for a monogenism of the human species. Darwin conceived the common origin of all humans (aka [[single-origin hypothesis]]) as essential for [[evolutionary theory]]. Darwin cited Nott and Gliddon's arguments as an example of those classing the races of man as separate species; Darwin disagreed and he concluded that humanity is one species.<ref>{{Cite book | last = Darwin | first = Charles | author-link =Charles Darwin | year = 1871 | title =[[The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex]] | edition =1st | location = London | publisher =John Murray | url = | accessdate = }} [http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=F937.1&pageseq=230 p. 217]</ref>
Nott was a founder of the [[Medical College of Alabama]], established in Mobile in 1859,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Nott Hall, 1922 [removed] · Campus Historical Markers · ADHC-OmekaS |url=https://adhc.lib.ua.edu/adhc-omekaS/s/historicalmarkers/item/57 |access-date=2023-11-01 |website=adhc.lib.ua.edu}}</ref> and served as its professor of surgery. In 1860 he successfully appealed to the [[Alabama legislature|state legislature]] for a monetary appropriation and a state charter for the school. During the [[American Civil War]], he served as a [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] surgeon and [[staff officer]]. During the early years of the war, he served as director of the Confederate General Army Hospital in Mobile; later, he served in the field as medical director on the staffs of Brig. Gen. [[Daniel Ruggles]] and Gen. [[Braxton Bragg]], and as hospital inspector. He lost both of his remaining sons to the war. Upon his own death in 1873, he was interred at [[Magnolia Cemetery (Mobile, Alabama)|Magnolia Cemetery]] in Mobile.
==Honors== A building at the [[University of Alabama]] was named Nott Hall in honor of Nott for his work at the predecessor Medical College of Alabama. It attracted controversy in 2016, with several student groups petitioning the building to be renamed or an educational plaque to be added because of Nott's open racism even by the standards of his era.<ref>[https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/news/20161108/student-group-seeking-change-targets-building-namesakes-with-racist-pasts Student group seeking change targets building namesakes with racist pasts]</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2016/0223/Why-keep-a-KKK-leader-s-name-on-a-University-of-Alabama-building|title=Why keep a KKK leader's name on a University of Alabama building?|work=The Christian Science Monitor|first=Story|last=Hinckley|date=August 16, 2016|access-date=March 15, 2025}}</ref> On August 5, 2020, his name was removed from the building, which was renamed Honors Hall.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.al.com/education/2020/08/alabama-strips-racists-name-from-campus-building.html | title=Alabama strips racist's name from campus building|website=AL.com|first=Michael|last=Casagrande|date=5 August 2020|access-date=March 15, 2025}}</ref>
==Evolving views on race of the Egyptians == {{See also|Hamitic hypothesis}} While originally believing that the Egyptians were purely Caucasian, the authors of ''Types of Mankind'' (1854) modified their views based on excavations from earlier dynasties. In their view, the earliest Egyptians were neither Caucasian or Negro but an intermediate Negroid type.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Nott |first=Josiah Clark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kN03EGxwVLUC&pg=PA225 |title=Types of Mankind Or Ethnological Researches, Based Upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and Upon Their Natural, Geographical, Phililogical, and Biblical History by J.C. Nott and Geo. R. Gliddon |date=1854 |publisher=Trübner |pages=225 |language=en}}</ref> However, they still believed that pure Negroes existed in Egypt only as slaves:
"But, while it must be conceded that Negroes, at no time within the reach even of monumental history, have inhabited any of Egypt, save as captives; it may, on the other hand, be equally true, that the ancient Egyptians did present a type intermediate between other African and Asiatic races; and, should such be proved to have been the case, the autocthones of Egypt must cease to be designated by the misnomer of "Caucasian."<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Nott |first1=Josiah Clark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kN03EGxwVLUC&pg=PA217 |title=Ibid |year=1854 |pages=217}}</ref>
Specifically, in 1854, Nott and George R. Gliddon noted that according to majority of ethnographers and Samuel George Morton's own anthropological works, "the Fellahs of Upper and Middle Egypt, at the present day, continue to be an unmistakable race, and are regarded by most travelled authorities as the best living representatives of the ancient population of Egypt." They would also take the position that, "the iconographic monuments of the IVth, Vth, and VIth dynasties, is closely analogous to the predominant type of that day; which fact serves to strengthen our view that the Egyptians of the early dynasties were rather of an African or Negroid type-resembling the [[Bishari tribe|Bishari]] in some respects, and in others the [[Fellah|modern Fellah]], or peasantry of Upper Egypt."<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Nott |first1=Josiah Clark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kN03EGxwVLUC&pg=PA238 |title=Ibid |year=1854 |pages=238}}</ref>
In the 19th century, the word "Negro" was intended to be only used for people who displayed the highest degree of stereotypical black African characteristics, with the suffix [[wiktionary:-oid|oid]] in "Negroid" making the word literally mean "Negro like".<ref>{{Cite web |title=negroid {{!}} Etymology, origin and meaning of negroid by etymonline |url=https://www.etymonline.com/word/negroid |access-date=2023-07-31 |website=www.etymonline.com |language=en}}</ref> From the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica: "It is most convenient, however, to refer to the dark-skinned inhabitants of this zone by the collective term of Negroids, and to reserve the word Negro for the tribes which are considered to exhibit in the highest degree the characteristics taken as typical of the variety."<ref>{{Cite EB1911 |wstitle= Negro |volume = 19 |last1= Joyce |first1= Thomas Athol |author1-link= Thomas Athol Joyce|last2= Willcox |first2= Walter Francis |author2-link= Walter Francis Willcox |pages=344–349 |short=Greco, El1}}</ref>
[[Samuel George Morton#Evolving views on race of the Egyptians|Samuel Morton]] addressed several letters to [[George Gliddon]] and stated that he modified many of his old views on ancient Egypt, believing their origins to be similar to [[Barabra]] populations, but not Negroes.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Nott |first1=Josiah Clark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kN03EGxwVLUC&pg=PA231 |title=Ibid |year=1854 |pages=231–232 |language=en}}</ref> [[File:Figure 126.jpg|thumb|Figure 148 Types of Mankind P. 226<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Nott |first1=Josiah Clark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UDJMBb1b2i0C&pg=PA226 |title=Ibid |date=1854 |pages=226 |publisher=Lippincott, Grambo & Company |isbn=978-0-608-40877-4 |language=en}}</ref>]]
==Works== * Nott, Josiah Clark. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=S0oCAAAAYAAJ&pg=563 Yellow Fever contrasted with Bilious Fever — Reasons for believing it is a disease sui generis — Its mode of Propagation — Remote Cause — Probable insect or animalcular origin, &c.]'' New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, volume 4 (1848), pp. 563–601. *Nott, Josiah Clark. ''Sketch of the Epidemic of Yellow Fever of 1847, in Mobile.'' The Charleston Medical Journal and Review, volume 1 (1848), pp. 1–21 [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/fever-towards-understanding-yellow-fever/ Excerpt], PBS, ''The Great Fever''. *Nott, Josiah Clark. ''Two Lectures on the Connection between the Biblical and Physical History of Man, Delivered by Invitation, from the Chair of Political Economy, Etc., of the Louisiana University, in December, 1848.'' (1848) *Nott, Josiah Clark. ''[https://archive.org/details/essayonnaturalhi00nott An Essay on the Natural History of Mankind, Viewed in Connection with Negro Slavery Delivered Before the Southern Rights Association, 14 December 1850.]'' (1851) *Nott, Josiah Clark, George R. Gliddon, Samuel George Morton, Louis Agassiz, William Usher, and Henry S. Patterson. ''Types of Mankind: Or, Ethnological Researches : Based Upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and Upon Their Natural, Geographical, Philological and Biblical History, Illustrated by Selections from the Inedited Papers of Samuel George Morton and by Additional Contributions from L. Agassiz, W. Usher, and H.S. Patterson.'' (1854) * Nott, Josiah Clark, George Robins Gliddon, and Louis Ferdinand Alfred Maury. ''Indigenous Races of the Earth; Or, New Chapters of Ethnological Inquiry; Including Monographs on Special Departments.'' (1857)
== See also == *[[Scientific racism]] *[[Craniometry]]
==References== '''Notes''' {{reflist}}
'''Further reading''' * {{cite web|last1=Horsman|first1=Reginald|title=Josiah C. Nott|url=http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1484|website=The Encyclopedia of Alabama|publisher=Alabama Humanities Foundation|date=October 3, 2011}} * {{cite book|last1=Horsman|first1=Reginald|title=Josiah Nott of Mobile: Southerner, Physician, and Racial Theorist|url=https://archive.org/details/josiahnottofmobi0000hors|url-access=registration|date=1987|publisher=Louisiana State University Press|location=Baton Rouge|isbn=978-0807113660}} *Keel, Terence. (2018). ''Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial Science''. Stanford, Cali.: Stanford University Press. *Peterson, Erik L. (2017). "Race and Evolution in Antebellum Alabama: The Polygenist Prehistory We'd Rather Ignore." In: C.D. Lynn et al. (eds)., ''Evolution Education in the American South'', 33–59. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1057/978-1-349-95139-0_2.
==External links== {{Library resources box |by=yes |about=yes |onlinebooks=yes |label=Josiah Clark Nott |viaf=59322128}} * {{Commons category-inline|Josiah Clark Nott}} * {{Gutenberg author|id=41241}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Nott, JC}} [[Category:1804 births]] [[Category:1873 deaths]] [[Category:19th-century American medical doctors]] [[Category:American anthropologists]] [[Category:Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania alumni]] [[Category:People involved in race and intelligence controversies]] [[Category:American Christian creationists]] [[Category:Proponents of scientific racism]] [[Category:University of Alabama faculty]] [[Category:Slave owners from Alabama]] [[Category:American white supremacists]] [[Category:Burials at Magnolia Cemetery (Mobile, Alabama)]]