In 1864–’66 Professor Vogt published a collection of lectures on injurious and useful animals, embodying one of the earliest pleas for the birds, and for which he received a silver medal and a testimonial letter from the Paris Society for the Protection of Animals; and a memoir on those curiously deformed human beings (of which the "Aztec children" of the showmen were specimens) called "microcephales" or man-monkeys. He regarded the defects in structure of these creatures as phenomena of atavism, or reversion to the structure of simian ancestors—man in body, monkey in mind. The publication was the occasion of bitter controversies.
This added to his fame, and when, in 1867, he started on a lecture tour in Germany, Austria, and Belgium, he met large audiences. The purpose of his lectures was to make a popular presentation of the Darwinian principles and to vindicate freedom of inquiry. The theory of the man-monkey was formally and earnestly discussed, at the Prehistoric Congress held at Copenhagen in 1869, between Professors Vogt and Quatrefages. Vogt, with Virchow, Fraas, Ecker, and others, at this time took the first steps toward the formation of the German Anthropological Society; and the first volume of the Archiv für Anthropologice contained an article by Vogt on the Primitive Times of the Human Pace.
During the Franco-German War of 1870 Vogt's sympathies were with France, and he opposed the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. This caused a temporary estrangement between him and his German friends. The unpleasant feeling gradually passed away, and when, in 1871, the Congress of Prehistoric Archæology and Anthropology met at Bologna in connection with the celebration of the eight hundredth anniversary of the university, he was relied upon to temper the hostility between the French and German professors, who had carried their political animosities into their science.
One of the most curious incidents of Professor Vogt's life, considering what a freethinker he was, was his defense of the Roman Catholic schools in Geneva against a bill depriving them of privileges which were still left to the Protestants and Jews. The bishop asked his influence in the matter, saying in his letter that notwithstanding their differences on all common questions, he recognized Vogt as the impartial champion of the liberties of all. This act caused a separation of Vogt from the majority of his party on the question and aroused some animosity, culminating in an unsuccessful effort to disturb his position in the academy. Shortly afterward a faculty of medicine was created, and the academy was raised to the rank of a university. Professor Vogt was active in the efforts that were used toward making the institution worthy of its name and providing it with a suitable building. His lectures to his classes are described
