Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric PeoplesNadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
History
Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples
Nadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
Archaeology; Prehistoric peoples
In the north of Europe similar discoveries have been made. At Borreby,
in Denmark, a skull was found from which large pieces had been taken;
and another from beneath a dolmen at Noes, in the island of Falster,
had a hole in it no less than two and a quarter by one and three
quarter inches in size. In the one case the holes were parts of a wound
to which the victim had succumbed; in the other the edges were too
regular to have been caused by traumatism. A Russian skull, a cast of
which has recently been presented to the Italian Anthropological
Society, bears traces of two trepanations; one performed during life,
the other after death. The former had evidently been caused neither by
illness nor by a wound.
General Faidherbe discovered at Roknia, in Algeria, two trepanned
skulls, dating from a remote antiquity, in one of which the wound is
half an inch in diameter, and shows no sign of cicatrization; and
travellers speak of evident traces of similar operations on skulls
dating from the time of the Aïnos, the ancestors or predecessors of the
Japanese at the present day; and if we cross the Atlantic, we shall
meet with instances of trepanations executed in a similar manner, and
probably for similar reasons.
We meet with numerous examples of trepanation in America, and fresh
discoveries are daily made by the energetic men of science in that
country. Dr. Mantegazza28 mentions three examples of trepanation from
Peru, which are of very great interest. One skull, still bound up in
many cloths, was found in the Sanja-Huara Cave (province of Anta),
which had been twice trepanned, and on which yet two more attempts at
trepanation bad been made. The latter seem to have taken place at
different times, and death seems to have succeeded the last operation.
Another skull which had belonged to an adult of Huarocondo has two
frontal openings close to each other; the upper, of elliptical shape,
is of large size and was evidently made after death. Yet another skull
from the province of Ollantay-tambo bears a double trepanation,
evidently made during life. The healing of the parietal opening proves
that it was made before the wound in the forehead, in which the edges
have remained rough. Dr. Mantegazza thinks that in the two first cases
the operations took place after the patient had been wounded, but that
in the third, the patient operated upon bad been epileptic or perhaps
even insane. We find it difficult to follow the learned professor here,
as w e are ignorant of the grounds for his conclusions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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