Twelve Boston physicians and their composite portrait

Twelve Boston physicians and their composite portrait

Bowditch, H. P. (Henry Pickering), 1840-1911

Eugenics

Composite photographs

Portraits

Dr. H. P. Bowditch took photographs of himself and eleven colleagues—all members of a physician’s dining club, the Kappa Pi Eta—in 1887 and again in 1892 and then devised a composite portrait of all twelve to isolate the common characteristics of a typical physician. “The face is distinctly intellectual in its character, and the apparent age is not far from the average age of the components…. The method of composite photography has, therefore, in this case, at any rate, produced a portrait which may be regarded as typical of the components, since its features fairly represent the group in respect to the only two qualities, namely, age and intelligence, in which the individual faces resemble each other.”

The original of this photograph was displayed with a number of other Bowditch composites at the Second International Exhibition of Eugenics in 1921.

Twelve portraits of Boston physicians, including photographer Henry Pickering Bowditch, and a composite portrait of the group

Bowditch, H. P. (Henry Pickering), 1840-1911

1892

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Harvard Medical School Clubs and Associations Photographs, 1855-1977. Image 00094.016, location M013.17

image

1 photographic print, mounted

still image

0001947

Gift of Dr. Harold Bowditch to the Library of Harvard Medical School, 1950