Anthropometry can be said to have started in mid-1800s when doctors were still very much in contact with ancient medicines whilst new paradigms they needed to understand were emerging. Aquilla di Giovanni, a doctor teaching at university of Bologna, created the first way of classifying people according to specific morphology. Since the 1600s, the idea of measuring and putting data together had been at the fore but it wasn’t until the 1800s that the classification of phrases, types, and evidence to back up findings came about.
In 1890 di Giovanni published the text “The Morphology of Human Body” where he explained all the correlations between the structures of the body, body shapes and certain diseases.