German ?

Dane.

4.

Croat.

5.

Illyrian.

M 35

I am the more induced to direct attention to it, as I think there is danger of a greater influence being assigned to this obliteration than is consistent with a true interpretation of the facts. This, I think, is done when the dolichocephalism characteristic of these skulls is regarded as the effect of the premature obliteration of their sutures. No doubt synostosis is a cause of dolichocephalism, as in cases of scaphocephalus, produced by the fusion of the two parietals, and obliteration of the sagittal suture. But in order that synostosis of the cranial bones should be the cause of an abnormal form of skull, it must commence at a very early period of life, if not indeed during the foetal condition. The forms of synostosis described and classified by the celebrated Virchow, as shown in his wood engravings, are altogether abnormal or teratological. They are, however, chiefly the skulls of cretins, idiots, epileptics, or insane persons; in whom a defective or irregular development of the brain is of frequent occurrence, and has probably an equal if not greater share in the production of the deformity of the skull than the premature ossification of the sutures which is associated with it. In his observations on the effects of synostosis as a cause of cranial deformities, Virchow expressly limits its influence to "the disturbances which the sutures undergo in early periods;" and adds the important words, "for with senile obliteration of them, or even their fusion in adult age after perfect formation of the cranial bones, we have naturally nothing to do."* As shown by Professor Welcker, "the containing and contained partsthe skull and brain-grow with each other," though the special form into which the skull is moulded is "conditioned by the mechanical operations of the growing and living brain."+ There can indeed be no doubt that the form of head proper to the race and to the individual is innate in the embryo, though liable to deviations both during intra-uterine and the earlier periods of independent existence..

The dolichocephalism of the Britons of the long-barrows and stone period is no more to be regarded as pathological than that of the African races, in whom there is likewise a great prevalence of premature synostosis. Neither is this last, as it ordinarily occurs after the period of puberty has been attained, pathological. On the

* Ueber den Cretinismus, und ueber Pathologische Schädelformen, 1851; Ges. Abhandlung. 1856, p. 899. It was long since observed by Otto, that obliteration of a suture "can only be properly considered as morbid, if observed previous to birth, or before the perfect development of the head."-Pathological Anatomy, by South, 1831, p. 160.

† Wachsthum und Bau, 1862, p. 20, 139.

*

contrary we may regard it as strictly a race-character; just as we may regard the same phenomenon in the Negro. In both it seems due to the same cause, defined by Welcker, as "a luxuriant bonegrowth" in the still growing suture margins. It is not improbable that in dolichocephalous peoples, the great longitudinal sagittal suture (in the same way, though in a much less degree than the frontal suture), may be more prone to early obliteration than the transverse ones, in consequence of the suture margins being more carly brought into apposition, from the growth of the brain being more active in the longitudinal direction than in the tranverse. However this may be, it is an observation of the late distinguished French anatomist Gratiolet, that in the inferior races, especially Africans and Alfouras, the sutures close much earlier than in Europeans, and likewise in a different order; the lambdoid closing first in the White, the coronal in the Negro and Alfoura, and vice versa.† M. Pruner-Bey also insists on the premature obliteration of the sutures as characteristic of the Negro. The frontal and lateral parts of the coronal suture are, he says, uniformly obliterated in early youth. Ossification next extends to the middle of the coronal and the sagittal, the lambdoid being the last to close.‡

It is well known that the frontal suture, which usually ossifies

Ibid. p. 139. The same appears to be implied by Dr. Humphry, when he observes," the sutures are commonly obliterated earliest in those skulls in which a heavy hard condition of the bones evinces a preternatural activity of the ossifying processes."-Human Skeleton, 1858, p. 191.

"Dans

t Comptes Rendus de l'Acad. des Sciences, T. xliii. 1856, p. 428. l'homme blanc, les sutures s'ossifient d'une manière tardive. Cette oblitération se développe dans l'ordre suivant: 1, la suture sagittale; 2, la suture lambdoide; 3, la suture fronto-parietale. Dans les races Ethiopiennes et Alfourienne, au contraire, l'oblitération des sutures est précoce; et la fronto-parietale se soude avant la lambdoide. Ainsi, chez le Blanc, le crâne se ferme d'abord en arrière; chez le Negre et chez l'Alfouroux, il se ferme d'abord en avant. On observe souvent le même fait sur les crânes d'idiots appartenant à la race blanche. En outre, les récentes recherches de M. M. Baillarger, Cruveilhier et Vrolik, ont mis hors de doute le fait de l'ossification prematurée des sutures chez les idiots microcéphales, et sur l'absence de fontanelles chez eux au moment de la naissance." In a later memoir M. Gratiolet observes, "La persistance et la complication des sutures sont en général un signe favourable, et peuvent etre considérées comme les indices d'une perfectibilité plus ou moins étendue.”—Mém. de la Soc. Anthrop. T. i. p. 394. See also Bull, de la Soc. d' Anthrop T. ii. p. 178, 243. Dr. Meigs was unacquainted with M. Gratiolet's observations, when he remarked on "the periods at which the different cranical sutures are closed in the various races of men;" and when he asked, "To what extent are race-forms of the cranium dependent upon the growth and modifications of the sutures ?"-Nott and Gliddon, Indigenous Races, 1857, p.

238.

‡ Mém, sur les Nègres.-Mém de la Soc. d' Anthrop. 1860-63, T. i. p. 328, 336. M. Pruner-Bey also observes, "En général, la marche des soudures me paraît différer aussi selon la forme du crâne dolichocéphale ou brachycéphale."

within the first year of life, in a certain proportion of cases never closes, except with the other sutures in advanced age. The difference in the liability to the persistent frontal suture in different races must be known to all who are in the habit of examining skulls. In most Europeans it is by no means rare, and seems to occur in the proportion of about one in ten, in English, Gerinan, and French skulls.* Professor Welcker, who has devoted much attention to this subject, tells us that the open frontal suture is much less common in the inferior races; that in Mongols it is about as one in fourteen, in Malays about one in twenty, and in Americans and Negroes about one in forty or fifty. Welcker indeed barely admits its possibility in the Negro, and says he has never seen an instance. M. Pruner-Bey tells us he only saw it once in the large number of African skulls which he examined. There can be no doubt that it is extremely rare. In Dr. Barnard Davis's collection, there are about ninety Negro and Negroid skulls, and in not one is the frontal suture seen. On the other hand, in the series of 166 of such skulls in the Museum of the Army Medical Department, there are four (Ibo, Krooman and Ashantee), in which it is persistent. Altogether, its great rarity is clearly a race-character in the Negro. In a less degree, the same seems to have been the case with the dolichocephalous Britons of the stone period. Out of about 100 or 120 skulls and calvaria, which I have examined from the Long Barrows, I have found traces of the frontal suture in only four adult specimens.§ This gives a proportion of one in twenty-five or thirty. In the brachycephalous skulls from the Round Burrows, the open state of this suture is much more common; or according to my observations, about one in fifteen, which approaches that in modern Europeans.

In the Museum of the Army Medical Department at Netley, out of 169 skulls of English soldiers, (natives of England and Ireland) I counted sixteen in which this suture is persistent, or nearly one in ten. In Germans, we learn from Professor Welcker, that it occurs as often as one in nine. (Wachsthum und Bau, p. 99-100). In the immense collection of French skulls in the catacombs of Paris, Dr. Leach counted it in numerous instances, and in the proportion of at least one in eleven. (Clift, Cutal. Mus. Coll. Surgeons, part iii, 1831, p. 7).

+ Wachsthum und Bau. p. 99-100, 143.

G. Williamson, M.D. Human Crania in Mus. Army Medical Department, 1857, p. 78.

§ One is from the chambered barrow of West Kennet (No. 137); another from that of Rodmaton (No. 166, see woodcut, Cran. Brit. Pl. 59, p. (4); two others are from the long barrow at Dinnington. There are also two infant skulls, one from Tilshead, the other from Charlton Abbots, in which the same is seen; though the last seems to have belonged to a secondary interment.

Though the great liability, in the Negro, to premature obliteration of the sutures in general, and the almost infallible closure of the medio-frontal, is insisted upon by French and German anatomists, and anthropologists, no one appears to have pointed out that the posterior division of the median-longitudinal suture, or the sagittal, is especially liable to complete obliteration, both during the fœtal and the infantile period. That this, however, is the case, I shall be able to adduce sufficient evidence to prove. It is a just observation of M. Pruner-Bey, that the order of obliteration of the sutures differs according to whether the skull-form is dolicho- or brachy-cephalous; a law altogether confirmed by the different state of the sutures in the dolichocephalous skulls from the Long, and in the brachycephalous skulls, from the Round Barrows. In the dolichocephalous Negro, as in the dolichocephalous Briton, it may be concluded, (from the researches of Welcker, on the growth of the cranial bones by their borders), that the special liability of the median-longitudinal (frontal and sagittal) sutures to obliteration, is due to the opposed suture margins coming sooner into contact than in brachycephalous peoples, in consequence of the growth of the brain being chiefly in the longitudinal, and much less energetic in the transverse and vertical directions. In addition to this anatomical cause, it may be surmised, as pointed out at the meeting at Bath, by Dr. John Davy, that physiological influences may contribute to the same result, and that a tendency to exuberant ossification may be produced in the Negro as also (it may be added) it may have been in the Ancient Briton, by a diet of a highly animalized nature, consisting chiefly of milk and flesh.

It is concluded that in order that synostosis of the cranial bones should be the cause of any peculiar form of the skull, it must be one of two descriptions. Either it must be of intra-uterine origin, when it is most efficient in the production of monstrous, or teratological forms; or infantile, and occur during the period of growth and development; when it produces deviations more moderate in extent, though still abnormal.* By the ossific union of the two parietal bones, and consequent effacement of the sagittal suture in foetal life is produced that very abnormal skull-form, now known as

* As Dr. Humphry observes, "After indigitation (of the sutures) has taken place, the interlocking of the bones is so intricate that I question whether growth can take place at their edges much more easily than in other parts of their extent." loc. cit. p. 190.