News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1889-03-14
HEAT AND HEADS.
It Is Supposed that tho Sun viii
Harden the Human Skull.

One of the most interesting things
| mentioned by Prof. Virchow in his little
book just published, entitled "Medical
Rene 1brances Of an Egyptian Jour
ney, "in which he describes an excursion
| up the Nile as far as the first cataract,
Is that the broken skulls on the first
great sepulchral fields, dating from Ro-
man times, are as thick and hard as He
rodotus says those of the slain Egyptians
were in comparison with the brittle ones
of the Persians. The Greek historian
explains this by attributing it to the
early exposure of children to the heat
of the sum- and in many parts of Upper
Egypt the German travellers actually
found young children thus exposed dur
ing their parents absence in the fields
IN immense clay bowls, resembling in
shape a champagne glass with y stem,
into which they were put without shell
ter. This discovery by Prof. Virchow
is interesting, because it at once
suggests the question whether
the proverbial thickness of the
skull of the negro has not been
caused by exposure to the sun, and
whether it is a peculiarity of savages of
tropical countries that their skulls are
thicker and harder than those of the
inhabitants of temperate and colder
countries. Students of craniology have
never made any investigation to ascer-
tain whether the skulls of different
races vary in degrees of hardness. It
would be almost impossible to make
such an inquiry. As is well known,
the human skull increases in hardness
from childbirth to maturity and age.
miscellaneous collection of skulls of
any given people would therefore be of
no value in such an investigation. To
obtain a collection of skulls of number
of nationalities, that should be taken
from subjects all of the same age, to
have them all similarly prepared and
in sufficient numbers to make it posi-
bic to draw any general conclusions
from their comparison with each other,
attention has been given the relative
thickness of different skulls, or rather
to their weight, from which their
relative thickness may be inferred.
Of the large collection of crania in
the Army Medical Museum at Washing
ton the thickest are those of negroes and
Alaskan Indians. The skulls of other
Indians, both of North and South Amer
led, LII ltOLlCtl OI telu pcIdUo clIlu0S, anu
of the Esqrlimaux, do not appear to be
particularly thick. Among the ancient
Peruvian skulls recently received by the
museum, and the ancient crania collect
ed in Arizona last summer, there are
frequent individual variations in thick
ness, but no tendency to unusual thick
ness. The conclusion from these facts
is that exposure to the sun probably
does not cause thickness of the human
skull. In connection with this subject,
it is interesting to note that among the
Australians the sinus .trOntalis is gener-
ally found to be solid in the males, in
stead of being hollow, as in the skulls of
other races. This bone in the male Au-
stralians generally extends straight
across the head, the lower side overhang
.,9.-s tl.<-S ls,spte
out from under it, while in the North
American Indians modification of
shape dcprivcs them of that heavy look
about the forehead. The heavy sinus
frontaIiS of the Australians, of course, in
creases the weight of the skull.-Ihe
AHdlySt.