Publisher's Synopsis
Daniel Garrison Brinton (1837-99) was an American surgeon, historian, archaeologist, and ethnologist. After graduating from Yale in 1858 he studied at Jefferson Medical College, later continuing his studies in Paris and Heidelberg. During the American Civil War he was a surgeon in the Union army, but suffered sun-stroke at the Third Battle of Chattanooga and was never after able to travel in very hot weather, a handicap that affected his career as an ethnologist. After the war, Brinton practiced medicine in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and was editor of the Medical and Surgical Reporter in Philadelphia from 1874-87. He became professor of ethnology and archaeology in the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia in 1884, and was professor of American linguistics and archaeology in the University of Pennsylvania from 1886 until his death. Brinton was a member of numerous learned societies in the US and in Europe, serving as president to several at different times. Between 1868-99 he wrote many books and a large number of pamphlets, addresses, and magazine articles, including American Hero-Myths: A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent; The Myths of the New World; Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography; and Nagualism, A study in Native American Folk-Lore and History. This work, subtitled A Study in Ethnic Psychology, was published posthumously in 1902 in Putnam's 'The Science Series', having been all but completed at the time of Brinton's death.
