Learn English – Prof. John Dalton, “daltonism” and “color blindness”

My answer focuses on the first two of Josh61's questions—namely "Where does 'color blindness' come from? Was it imported from Germany as a more colloquial alternative to 'daltonism'?"

From a review of B. Joy Jeffries, Color Blindness: Its Dangers and Its Detection in The London Lancet: A Journal of British and Foreign Medicine (1880):

Although color-blindness must have existed at all times, the first recorded case, the not very satisfactory one, by Dr. Turberville, occurred in 1684. This patient could see forms very well, but no color besides black and white. She was probably hysterical, as she had scintillations at night, with appearances of animals, and could read for almost a quarter of an hour in great darkness. The next case was that of a man named Harris, reported by Mr. Huddart in 1777. The next was that of Mr. J. Scott in 1779. And then in 1794 comes the case of Dalton, whose description of his own red-blindness has become so well known as to have led some to apply the term “Daltonism” to color-blindness—a term that Dr. Joy Jeffries very properly deprecates, since it applies the name of a great philosopher to a prominent defect. ... Notwithstanding that all the earlier reported cases were English, no treatise appeared in this country on the subject till that of Wilson in 1855, and we have to thank Dr. Joy Jeffries for his very intelligently-written and useful little volume, which fills the hiatus that has been much felt.

With regard to nomenclature, perhaps the most significant assertion made here is that "no treatise appeared in this country [England] on the subject till that of Wilson in 1855." Treatises may not have appeared, but an article titled "Daltonism" appeared in Knight's Penny Magazine, volume 1 (1846), which never uses the term colorblind, but offers the following classification terminology, based on the conclusions of "Professor Wartmann, of Lausanne," who "presented a paper concerning it to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1841":

Professor Wartmann separates these cases into two classes, viz. dichromatic Daltonians, who can discern two colours, generally black and white; and polychromatic Daltonians, who can discern at least three colours.

Wartmann's article "Memoir on Daltonism {or Colour Blindness}," as read at the Société de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle de Genève on April 16, 1840, is reproduced in Scientific Memoirs, Selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of Science and Learned Societies, and from Foreign Journals, volume 4 (1846). Wartmann explains the choice of the name Daltonism thus:

Reserving the name Chromopsis for those cases in which colours are perceived in an extraordinary manner in consequence of a change of health, I shall apply to that in which the affection is natural the name of Daltonism, proposed by Professor Prevost, because the illustrious natural philosopher Dalton has described, as existing in his own case, many particulars of it.

But in a subsequent footnote, Wartmann defends the choice of the name Daltonism in the name of scientific continuity:

Professor Whewell is mistaken in attributing to me the choice of this denomination; I preserve it to avoid introducing a new one, whilst I quite agree with him, that few persons desire to be immortalized by their imperfections, and that Dalton, above all others, has no need of such a means of transmitting his name to posterity. ... For the rest, I think with an illustrious natural philosopher (Sir D. Brewster [in a January 1842 review]), ... that the term Idiopts, by which Mr. Whewell designates the Daltonians, is by no means a happy one. ... Nearly forty years ago the denomination Daltonian was employed in the oral instruction in the Academy of Geneva. Pierre Prevost printed as follows in 1827, in the Bibliothèque Universelle: "The subject, whose vision he has described, appears to differ from the great number of those whom I am accustomed to call daltonians only by a slight degree of darkness in the shades."—Tome xxxv. p. 321. And further on:—"On this statement......I do not hesitate to pronounce him a Daltonian."—Ibid. p. 322.

The issue was so delicate, however, that the editor of Scientific Memoirs deemed it appropriate to append another footnote regarding the name choice:

NOTE.—Sir David Brewster, in his remarks on this memoir (Phil. Mag. for Aug. 1844, p. 134), expresses his regret that the author should have continued to employ this term [Daltonism], which he censures as degrading to the venerated name of Dalton, and faulty in regard of nomenclature. It is with reluctance that the Editor becomes accessory to the retention of this objectionable denomination, for which he would have much preferred to substitute Parachromatism, Parachromatic, &c., derivatives of παραχρωννυμι, παραχρωσις, &c., as designating generally the fact of perversion of colour; but he is advised that such a change would be beyond the province of a translator. He has, however, ventured to add, in the title merely, the term Colour Blindness, adopted by Sir David Brewster. Dyschromatopsis, Pseudopsis and Heteropsis have been suggested, but the latter two are not sufficiently specific.—ED.

A review of Wartmann's Memoir on Daltonism and Brewster's Observations on Colour Blindness, or Insensibility to the Impression of Certain Colours in The Princeton Review (July 1845) offers this account of the naming controversy:

On account of the prominence which Mr. Dalton's publication gave this defect of vision, the continental philosophers gave it the name of Daltonism. To this name, however, several British writers strongly objected. If this system of names were once allowed, say they, there is no telling where it would stop, the names of celebrated men would be connected, not with their superior gifts or achievements, but with the personal defects which distinguish them from their more favoured but less meritorious contemporaries. Professor Whewell proposed the term Idiopts, signifying peculiarity of vision ; but to this name Sir David Brewster properly objected, that the important consonant p would be very apt to be omitted in ordinary pronunciation, and so the last state of the Idiopt would be worse than the first. The name colour-blindness, suggested by Sir David, although not in all cases free from objection, is perhaps better than any we have seen proposed.

So colo[u]r blindness originated with Sir David Brewster, who disliked associating the illustrious name of Sir John Dalton with an imperfection, albeit one that Dalton possessed. The original term daltonian is harder to pin down. In exculpating himself, Professor Wartmann attributes the original choice to unnamed persons at the Academy of Geneva and secondarily to Professor Prevost writing in 1827. Adding a truly dissonant note to the proceedings was Professor Whewell's counter-suggestion Idiopts.

One can only wonder whether the subsequent course of terminology in English would have been different if the editor of Scientific Memoirs in 1846 had dared to go beyond the province of a translator and had changed all of Wartmann's instances of Daltonism and Daltonian to Parachromatism and Parachromatic.