Ch. Letourneau

Charles Letourneau (1831–1902) was a French physician and anthropologist. After practicing medicine, he became a leading figure in the Paris Society of Anthropology, serving as its general secretary, and taught the history of civilizations at the School of Anthropology in Paris. Committed to an evolutionary view of human society, he wrote a series of comparative studies of institutions across cultures, among them The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family, and books on the evolution of property, religion, literature, slavery and politics. Several of his works appeared in English in the Contemporary Science Series edited by Havelock Ellis.