PREHISTORIC TREPANNING. 539 



Apparently in all these cases the persons who were trepanned 

 walked about among their fellows with always a soft place in 

 their heads. But sound skulls have also been found with disks 

 from other men's heads securely lodged within their own. These 

 disks must have been introduced after death, and must have had 

 a religious purpose. 



The first of those so discovered was in the museum of Gre- 

 noble ; it was noted in 1867 by M. Chambre, who completely mis- 

 understood it, and supposed that the disk was a sort of bone 

 spoon. 



Another very singular discovery among the sepulchral re- 

 mains of the same epoch and race concerns skulls, though not the 

 trepanning of them. A considerable number of heads have been 

 discovered stuffed with children's bones, and bearing traces of 

 having been polished by friction. The skulls have apparently been 

 carried hung round the neck as a sort of pocket on the breast, 

 and small bones belonging to several children have been packed 

 within them, specimen bones, as it were, taken from several differ- 

 ent subjects. 



The explanation of this is much easier than that of the tre- 

 panned skulls. It is supposed that a widow carried about with 

 her the head of the " late lamented," and that in it she preserved 

 memorials of her children who had died young, for the purpose 

 of keeping by her a couple of bones of each of her pets. 



The practice of wearing disks of skull was not confined to the 

 people of the stone age. Two such have been found with holes 

 for suspension in a Gaulish sepulchre at Wargemoulin, in Cham- 

 pagne, suspended to a bronze torque. Another was found with 

 the body of a child of the Gaulish epoch. Others have been 

 found in the cemeteries of Marne appertaining to the same people 

 and to the historic period. In some cases undoubtedly heads were 

 operated upon after death, and portions removed to serve as 

 trophies, much as a North American Indian carried off and 

 gloried in the scalps he obtained. But the evidence is all against 

 this as explaining the greater number of cases of holed heads. 



What is more probable is that these cranial disks were em- 

 ployed as amulets. In the exhibition at Milan in 1881, M. Bel- 

 lucci showed such a portion of a skull that had been actually in 

 use at the present day among the Italian peasantry as a cure for 

 convulsions and epilepsy. 



The writer of this article remembers some forty years ago 

 making the acquaintance of a very charming Irish gentleman and 

 lady. One day she thought she observed that his eyes were rest- 

 ing inquiringly on her brooch, which was of gold, inclosing a 

 mass of fractured bone. She laughed and said : " Are you admir- 

 ing my brooch ? I will tell you the story of it. One day, some 



