propres du nez tendent à se relever davantage suivant les traits des
individus ou des races.”77
Some physiologists have supposed that permanent modifications
of crania] form are produced during severe and protracted accouchements.
Gall, long ago, refuted this notion, and every accoucheur has,
in fact, constant opportunities of satisfying himself of the untena-
bility of this doctrine. It has more than once happened to me, as it
necessarily does to every physician engaged in the practice of obstetrics,
to witness a head, long compressed in a narrow pelvis, born
with the nose greatly depressed, the forehead flattened, the parietal
bones overriding each other, and the whole skull completely wiredrawn,
so as to resemble some of the permanent deformations pictured
in the hooks ; and yet, in a few days, the inhérent elasticity of
the bony case and its contained parts has sufficed to restore it to its
natural form. But the great objection to this opinion lies’in the fact
of a conformity between the cranial and pelvic types of a particular
race. D r . Vrolick, following up the suggestions of Camper and some
other observers, relative to certain peculiarities of the negro pelvis,
has demonstrated the existence of a raee-form for the pelvis as for
the cranium. He has shown that the form of the head is adapted to
the pelvic passage which it is compelled to traverse in the parturient
act, and that the pelvis, like the skull, possesses its raee-characters
and sexual distinctions, sufficiently well marked, even at the infantile
epoch. As in the zoological series, we find the cranium of the monkey
differing from that of the animals below it, and approximating
the human type, so we find the pelvis pursuing the same gradation,
from the Orang to the Bosjieman, from the Bosjieman to the Ethiopian,
from the Ethiopian to. the Malay, and so on to the high caste
White races, where it attains its perfection, and is the farthest removed
in form from that of the other mammiferæ. I am aware that W eber
has attempted to deny the value of these observations, by showing
that, although certain pelvic forms occur more frequently in some
races than in others, yet exceptions were found in the fact of the
European conformation being occasionally encountered among other
and very different races. “ This is not proving much,” as De Gobineau
acutely observes, “ inasmuch as M. Weber, in speaking of
these exceptions, appears never to have entertained the idea, that
their peculiar conformation could only be the result of a mixture of
blood.”78
n Essai snr les Déformations Artificielles du Crâne, Par L. A. Gosse, de Genève, &o.
Paris, 1855. Published originally as a contribution to the “Annales d’Hygiène Publique et de
Médecine Légale” 2e série, 1855, tomes.HI. et IV.
« Op. cit., t. 1, p. 193.
In -the study of cranial forms, sexual differences should not be
overlooked. I The female skull,” says D avis, “ except in races
equally distinguished by forms strikingly impressed, does not exhibit
the gentilitial. characters eminently.” 79 It is well known to the obstetrician,
that the male skull, at birth, is, on the average, larger than
the female.
A complete history of the development of the human brain and
cranium, in the different races, would constitute one of the most
valuable contributions to anthropology. Such a history alone can
determine the trué meaning of the various appearances which these
parts assume in their transition from the ovum to the fully-developed
typical character, and demonstrate their as yet mysterious relations
to the innumerable forms of life which are scattered over the surface
of the globe. To such a history must we look, also, for a solution
of the question, as to whether the soft and pulpy brain models around
itself its hard and resisting bony case, or, conversely, whether this
latter gives shape to the former.
During the first six weeks of embryonic life, the brain, clothed in
its different envelopes, exists without any bony investment, being
surrounded externally with an extremely thin, soft, and pliable cartilaginous
membrane, in which ossification subsequently takes place.
About the eighth week, as shown by the investigations of Gall, the
ossific points appear in this membrane, sending out diverging radii
in every direction. As this delicate cartilaginous layer is moulded
nicely over the brain, the minute specks of calcareous matter, as they
are deposited, must to some extent acquire the same form as the brain.
Whether this be true or not, there is a manifest adaptation between
the brain and cranium, the result of a harmony in growth, inseparably
connected with the action of one developing principle in the human
economy. From this fact, alone, we might fairly infer that differences
in the volume and configuration of a number of crania are general
indications of differences in the volume and configuration of their
contained brains. One single fact, among many others, proves this
admirable harmony. It is this : The process of ossification is at first
most rapid in the bones composing the vault; but presently ceasing
here, it advances So rapidly in those of the base and inferior parts
generally, that at birth the base is solid and incompressible, thus
protecting from pressure the nervous centre of respiration, which is
at this time firmer and better developed than the softer and less
voluminous cerebral lobes.
According to the embryologie investigations of M. d e S e r r e s , of
all brains, that of the high-cáste European is the most complex in
79 Op. cit., p. 6.