Josiah C. Nott

Josiah Clark Nott
Nott during the 1860s
Born	March 31, 1804 South Carolina, U.S.
Died	March 31, 1873 (1873-04-01) (aged 69) Mobile, Alabama, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Surgeon

Josiah Clark Nott (March 31, 1804 – March 31, 1873) was an American physician and surgeon. He was also an author of surgical, yellow fever, and racist theories.

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.

Nott, the owner of nine slaves, "used his influence and his science to defend the subjugation of blacks through slavery". He claimed that "the negro achieves his greatest perfection, physical and moral, and also greatest longevity, in a state of slavery".

Born on March 31, 1804 in the U.S. state of South Carolina, Nott was the son of the 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, France. He moved to Mobile, Alabama in 1833 and began a surgical practice.

Nott took up theories that the mosquito was a vector for malaria, held by John Crawford and his contemporary Lewis Daniel Beauperthy. He is credited as being the first to apply the insect vector theory to yellow fever, then a serious health problem of the American South. In his 1850 Yellow Fever Contrasted with Bilious Fever he attacked the prevailing miasma theory. Nott lost four of his children to yellow fever in one week in September 1853.