The life-work of Francis Galton should especially interest physicians because his early education was directed toward medicine. His parents wished him to follow in the footsteps of his uncle, Dr. Robert Darwin, the son of Erasmus and the father of Charles, the formulator of the modern doctrine of evolution. And, indeed, at 16 the oculist Bowman took him in hand. Unfortunately for our profession, however, his father bequeathing him an ample fortune, young Galton abandoned the plan of practicing medicine, "though most grateful for the enlarged 'insight into nature" that he had acquired during his brief medical experience. He then entered on a career in science most multifarious and conspicuous. Throughout his long life he has been a tireless classifier, a founder of laboratories, a framer of subtle systems of classification and of "statistical units"; he has been concerned in meteorology, geography, exploration, pedagogics, mathematical inventions, anthropology, "finger-prints," psychology, heredity.