proceedings: anthropological society 655 



some indications that it may in some of the most advanced groups 

 adversely affect the abihty of procreation. The evolution of man will 

 continue, and in order that it shall proceed with the least harm and 

 towards the greatest benefit of mankind, it will require the most en- 

 lightened and increasingly important help and service from all branches 

 of medicine. 



The paper was well illustrated and briefly discussed. 



At the 489th meeting of the Society, held October 19, 1915, in the 

 Public Library, Dr. D. S. Lamb, of the Army Medical Museum, read a 

 paper on The medicine and surgery of the ancient Peruvians, giving 

 first some account of the country and its people, their history, customs, 

 food, and religion. We have no evidence of hospitals in old Peru. 

 The people are said not to have studied the medicinal properties of 

 their plants, although they well knew the properties of what is called 

 Peruvian bark, used in malarial fevers. Whether syphilis or leprosy 

 occurred among them is doubted. The same may be said of tuberculosis, 

 although some writers, like Ashmead, ascribe the mutilations represented 

 on their pottery to local skin tuberculosis, usually known as lupus. These 

 mutilations have also been regarded as resulting from punishments or 

 surgical operations. Three skin diseases are considered peculiar to the 

 ancient Peruvians, the miriuita, caused b}^ a worm entering the skin; 

 the verrugas, a very fatal disease of a warty character that struck terror 

 into Pizarro's soldiers in 1532; and the uta. They had the climatic, 

 dietetic, respiratory, and heart diseases found elsewhere, and from 

 similar causes. Malarial fevers prevailed and were usually of the 

 tertian variety. Smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, and yellow fever 

 were introduced by the Spaniards and their successors. The Peru- 

 vians had what seems to have been a typhus called tahardillo. Goitre 

 prevailed and was said to be caused by drinking the turbid water 

 from the mountains. They deformed the heads of their infants, very 

 , much as did the Chinook Indians of the northwestern United States, 

 by pressure front and back; one tribe is said to do so still. Their 

 injuries were necessarily, for the most part, much the same as now, with 

 the exception of shot wounds and injuries caused in modern industrial 

 occupations. They scarified and let blood, reduced dislocations, used 

 fixation apparatus for fractures as we do, covered open wounds, cut 

 out pterygiums, and trepanned the skull. This trepanning was done 

 either directly to relieve disease and injury or simply to let out the 

 demon that cabsed the trouble. 



In discussing Dr. Lamb's paper. Dr. C. L. G. Anderson said that 

 the predecessors of the Incas also, the people who built the megaliths 

 at Tiahuanaco and the great fortress at Cuzco, likewise knew much 

 about medicinal herbs. The Indians made infusions, decoctions, 

 powders, and ointments of barks, leaves, berries, roots, and vines. A 

 few remedies were obtained from the mineral kingdom, such as sulphur 

 and salty earths. Certain baths and hot springs were utilized in curing 

 rheumatism and various skin diseases. Garcilaso de la Vega says 



