"...with mathematic precision" - continued...

But the numbers recorded were only comparative, never absolute which is, indeed, what Péron had in mind, as he wanted to measure the muscular strength of the natives against that of the Europeans (represented by the crews aboard the two ships). As a consequence, Péron discovered a hierarchy of physical constitution (Péron 1807, p. 457) among the ethnic (or national) groups involved. The results delivered a statistical average value for the amount of force the subjects were capable of pushing; first using both hands, and second using their back:

from: Péron, M. F. 1807. Voyage de découvertes aux terres australes, p. 484.

This was, incidentally, a confrontation which cast its spell over much of the nineteenth century: either via the outside (in Péron's case), or, as we see in the example of the Turin-based scholar Cesare Lombroso, as a search for the foreign element within one's own society, an element which comes to be identified as "uomo delinquente" (Lombroso 1876). Lombroso also refers to muscular strength as one of the "stigmata degenerationis" (ibid, p. 229 ff.), qualities which he attempted to show objectively with the help of measurements taken with the dynamometer (ibid, p. 530). A great admirer of Franz Joseph Gall, he deemed it possible to draw conclusions on the nature of the soul via physical attributes and vice versa.