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In this paper I review the signifi cant events in the history of the emergence of quantitative inquires in the anthropological fi eld, with a focus on their application to clinical practice. Th e roots of Biometry the meeting between life sciences, instruments and numbers lie in the adventure which began with the overtaking of the Cartesian mechanicism and the Linnean classifi cation of man among the natural objects. When an “histoire naturelle de l’homme” (Broca) became possible, it began “the season of measurers”, who were convinced of the practical utility of numbers. In the second half of the 19th century, Galton played a noteworthy part in the systematic introduction of quantitative methods to investigate biological phenomena. What Galton liked to measure most were human traits and qualities. Even if in literature he is often credited as the “pioneer of biometry”, in practice his privileged ‘instrument’ was Anthropometry. Th e art of measuring the human body was practiced since ancient times, but its use was mostly restricted to the realm of the fi gurative arts. In the strictly naturalistic fi eld, the employment of anthropometry does not have a long history. A short manual entitled “Anthropometria”, probably the fi rst appearance of the term, was published by the naturalist Johann Sigismund Elsholtz in the 17th century. It was only from the second half of the 18th century that anthropometry was adopted more widely, fi rst by naturalists and then by anthropologists, in order to investigate man and his main morphological characteristics. During the 19th century, the relevance of the research of Adolphe Quetelet popularized the anthropometrical method which was extensively employed in several fi elds. With the rise of Constitutional medicine at the end of 19th century, anthropometry became a new ‘instrument’ of the clinical practice. However, the aim of constitutional physicians was diff erent from that of anthropological program the identifi cation of common traits in human beings to study and determine population groups – and from the descriptive aim of the fi gurative arts. Constitutional medicine was interested in the question of Individuality and, by employing quantitative inquiries, its ambition was that of fi nding the diff erences between individuals for diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic aims.