Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/626

608 sagacity. The theory of these holes being the result of a blow from a stone hatchet is indeed extremely improbable in itself; then, too, why should skulls so disfigured be found in such numbers at Marvejols?



Evidently these perforations were made by the hand of man, and with some design; or, to speak more plainly, these people trepanned one another. For what motive did they practise this painful and often fatal operation? Numerous hypotheses have been put forward. Some suppose, with a fair degree of probability, that it had a therapeutic object. The trepan, indeed, has been practised from the most remote antiquity. Hippocrates speaks of it as an operation widely diffused; and, although the father of medicine is in the habit of citing authorities, and of naming the inventors of operations, he does not tell us the name of the originator of trepanning, which leads lis to think that his name was not known, because it was lost in the night of time. It is true that the name, from τρεπω, I turn, indicates that, when it was admitted into Greek surgery, it was performed, as it is now, by the aid of a centre-bit; still, in primitive times ruder methods were no doubt employed. The trepan was in great repute among the Greeks, and during the middle ages was resorted to for the cure of a number of maladies. The same practice widely prevails at the present time among uncivilized races.

M. le Baron de Larrey, in a note communicated to the Paris Academy of Medicine, relates that the Kabyles still frequently practise the operation, making with a saw four cuts in the shape of a parallelogram. General Faidherbe has sent to the Laboratoire des hautes