studying Anthropometry. He examined people including sailors of a variety of ethnicities to study anatomical differences. He was influenced by work done by John Hunter which he had seen in London. Like Hunter, he described differences in skull and facial shapes and also the length of forearm and humerus and came to the incorrect conclusion that different 'races' were of separate origins. White's Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables (1799) attempted to provide empirical science for the theory of polygenism. White proposed the theory of polygeny, refuting French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon's inter-fertility argument – the theory that only the same species can interbreed – pointing to species hybrids such as foxes, wolves and jackals, separate groups that were still able to interbreed. For White, 'races' were separate species, divinely created for their own geographical regions. He concentrated on Africans' and African Americans' differences from Europeans, which led him to believe that people from these areas had derived from separate origins. Though these theories were clearly incorrect and reflected—and contributed to—the racist ideologies of the time, White said that his work must never be "construed so as to give the smallest countenance to the pernicious practice of enslaving mankind, which [he wished] to see abolished throughout the world" and that he was opposed to "assigning to any one a superiority over another". Family and later life In 1757, White married Ann Bradshaw, whose father had been a high sheriff for the county of Lancaster. They had eight children, four sons and four daughters. Two of his sons had become doctors, but they and his two other sons died before him. In 1803, White suffered an attack of ophthalmia, which initially only affected his left eye, and — with difficulty — he continued to work. In 1811, it affected the right eye and he soon became blind. He died at his home in Sale on 20 February 1813. He was survived by his daughters, one of whom, Anne White, married Sir Richard Clayton, to whom White's thesis on Regular Gradation of man was dedicated. References Citations Bibliography Further reading 1728 births 1813 deaths 18th-century English medical doctors Fellows of the Royal Society Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Physicians of the Manchester Royal Infirmary Physicians of St Mary's Hospital, Manchester