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The first measured two and a third by two and a half inches, and was surrounded by scratches, showing how clumsy the operator had been. In nearly every case the subjects operated on were young, and long survived the operation. The knowledge of this fact was from the first a very useful guide in the study of the subject of trepanation, and eagerly pursued researches constantly confirm it.
While they have so much to say about fractures of the skull and insist, over and over again, that though all depressed fractures need treatment and many fissure fractures require trepanation, still great care must be exercised in the selection of cases.
The bony tissue of the skull was in an unhealthy state and the trepanation had evidently been part of medical treatment. In this tomb was also found a round piece of skull with a hole in it, which had doubtless been used as a pendant.
The Prague Museum possesses two crania found at Bilin in Bohemia; one, of a pronounced dolichocephalic type, has near the middle of the right parietal an opening measuring one and a half by two and a third inches; the cicatrization is complete, and trepanation was evidently performed long before death. The other is mesaticephalic, and bears a round opening about one and a half inches in diameter.
A number of crania and parts of crania on which trepanation had been performed have also been taken from several mounds on Chamber's Island, from beneath the mound in the neighborhood of the Sable River, near Lake Huron, and near the Red River Gillman thinks that the Michigan trepanations, which bad been made with clumsy tools, were simply holes for hanging up skulls as trophies, as is still customary amongst the Dyaks of Borneo; but this seems scarcely a tenable hypothesis, for as a rule the skeletons lying in their last home are complete.
The child still wore the ornaments she had been fond of in life bronze bracelets and a necklace of large glass beads. Discoveries of a similar character succeeded each other in Bohemia, and in nearly every case the operation of trepanation had been performed on the upper part of the forehead.
We cannot now note the important conclusions founded on these two perforations, we must be content with adding here that the tomb contained four other skeletons with crania showing no trace of trepanation; the tibiae were platycnemic and the humeri had the so-called perforation of the olecranon farces, which certain anthropologists, as I think without sufficient reason, consider characteristic of inferior races.
Dr. Wankel, to whom we owe these details, is well known through other discoveries; his excavations in the Bytchiskala Cave brought to light the skeleton of a young girl of ten or twelve years old, who bad undergone the operation of trepanation. The wound, which was on the right side of the forehead, was half healed.
Amongst these relics was found the skull of an old man showing a very curious example of trepanation. It was unfortunately broken by the workmen in the very moment of discovery, and could only be very insufficiently examined.
From one of them, which was deeper than the others, he took several crania, some of which bore evident traces of trepanation. Every one of them had a round opening on the left temple, and in some of these wounds the flint implement which had produced them was still imbedded.
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