8 1 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



back of the cast are two lines of writing, greatly defaced, of which 

 this much can still be read : ' Dean Swift, taken off his * * * * the 

 night of his burial, and the f * * * * one side larger than the other 

 in nature * * Opened before * * * The mould is in pieces.' " A 

 deep indentation, says Wilde, shows where the calvarium had been 

 sawn ; and accurately corresponds with the division of the skull 

 found in Swift's coffin in 1835. On the same excellent authority we 

 know that the cast of the interior of Swift's skull is remarkable as 

 showing the enormous development of the vessels within the cranium, 

 the very small anterior lobes, the great size of the glandulae Pacchionian, 

 the exceedingly small cerebellum, a natural formation as may be seen 

 by the very low position of the tentorium, the immense size of the 

 posterior and middle lobes, particularly the former, and the absence 

 of any appearance of disease in the anterior lobes, as far at least as 

 this cast of the interior of the skull is capable of demonstrating. 



Swift of course was not exempt from intercurrent diseases, the 

 most important of which appear to have been a severe colic in 1696, 

 which brought him to extremity, " so that all despaired of my life, 

 and the newspapers reported me dead " ; an attack of herpes zoster of 

 the left neck and shoulder, with its atrocious after-pains, in 1712 ; 

 and a severe attack of ague in 1720, which lasted a whole year. But 

 these maladies appear to have passed away without permanent injury, 

 and it is to the cold which, before he was twenty, gave him a deafness 

 and an ear "which has never been well since," to which we must look 

 as the origin of his physical and ultimately of his mental miseries, and 

 which made him often describe himself as 



" Vertiginosus, inops, surdus, male gratus aniicis." 



He does not appear ever to have guessed that his vertigo was due to 

 the state of the auditory organ, nor indeed did any physician ever sus- 

 pect that such was the case in any one suffering from ear-giddiness, 

 until, led to reflect on the subject by Fleurens's experiments on the 

 semicircular canals of pigeons and rabbits, Meniere recognized the 

 causal connection in 1861. The paroxysmal nature of the affection, 

 with long intervals of immunity, is well marked in Swift's case, al- 

 though it would appear from a quotation made by Forster, p. 253, 

 from one of his note-books, that the fits were pretty frequent, the 

 reference to fits in his journal and correspondence only applying to the 

 more serious occasions. The quotation is as follows : 



" 1708. Nov. From 6th to 16, often giddy. G d help me. So to 

 25 less. 16, Brandy for giddiness 2s. Br dy 3 d . Dec. 5. Horribly 

 sick. 12th. Much better, thank God and M. D.'s prayers. 16^. 

 Bad fit at Mrs. Barton's. 24. Better ; but dread a fit. Better still to 

 the end. 1709, Jan. 2\st. An ill fit but not to excess. 29. Out of 

 order. 31. Not well at times. Feb. 7. Small fit abroad. Pretty 

 well to the end. March. Headache frequent. April 2nd. Small 



