James Cowles Prichard

James Cowles Prichard, MD FRS (11 February 1786 – 23 December 1848) was an English physician and ethnologist with broad interests in physical anthropology and psychiatry. His influential Researches into the Physical History of Mankind touched upon the subject of evolution. He also introduced the term senile dementia.

Prichard was born in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. His parents Thomas and Mary Prichard were Quakers: his mother was Welsh, and his father of an English family who had emigrated to Pennsylvania. Within a few years of his birth in Ross, Prichard's parents moved to Bristol, where his father now worked in the Quaker ironworks of Harford, Partridge and Cowles. Upon his father's retirement in 1800 he returned to Ross. As a child Prichard was educated mainly at home by tutors and his father, in a range of subjects, including modern languages and general literature.

Rejecting his father's wish that he should join the ironworks, Prichard decided upon a medical career. Here he faced the difficulty that as a Quaker he could not become a member of the Royal College of Physicians. Therefore, he started on apprenticeships that led to the ranks of apothecaries and surgeons. The first step was to study under the Quaker obstetrician Dr Thomas Pole of Bristol. Apprenticeships followed to other Quaker physicians, and to St Thomas' Hospital in London. In 1805, he entered medical school at Edinburgh University, where his religious affiliation was no bar. Also, the Scottish medical schools were held in esteem, having contributed greatly to the Enlightenment of the previous century.

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