Dr. Beth Linker, "The Making of a Posture Science"
From Aristotle to J. G. Herder, Western thinkers argued that bipedalism served as an important marker of human superiority, distinguishing human from non-human animals. It was not until the late-nineteenth century, in the wake of the Darwinian revolution and of a new, surveillance-based public health system, that scientists would begin to claim that poor posture was a grave health concern that had reached epidemic proportions, threatening the entire human race.
The first chapter of my forthcoming book, Slouch, traces the complex genealogical beginnings of the posture sciences and seeks to explain why erect human posture became something that comparative anatomists, physicians, and physical anthropologists studied with great concern and zeal. The chapter opens in 1891 with the discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus (later redesignated Homo erectus), or “Java Man,” seen by many as the “missing link” between human beings and apes. Research into the origins of bipedalism flourished in the Anglo-American world, taken up by men such as surgeon-anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith and Earnest Hooton. They and many of their colleagues argued that human beings were maladapted to the modern world for bipedalism appeared to cause significant respiratory illness, abdominal disorders, and foot weakness, conditions unobserved among non-human animals.
This cross-disciplinary interest in human evolution and physiology, along with social and cultural concerns about immigration, racial fitness, Empire, eugenics, and industrial efficiency, made the posture sciences possible. Moreover, the evolutionary sciences provided a convincing “outbreak” narrative for the poor posture epidemic, persuading many white middle-class professionals to engage in an anti-slouching crusade. Though the cause of the slouching epidemic resided in the deep past, it nevertheless persisted as a condition from which theoretically every human being could suffer.
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