54© THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ten years ago, when I was a young girl, I was staying in the 

 house of a friend who also knew Mr. N., who is now my husband. 

 We were having a game — a romp — and running after each other 

 through the house, which was large, with long galleries and 

 chambers communicating with one another. Mr. N. was close 

 behind me, trying to catch me. I darted through a door and 

 threw the door back behind me. Mr. 1ST. had his head down, and 

 the handle struck his skull and he fell stunned. The skull was 

 fractured, and to save his life he was obliged to have it trepanned. 

 Now he wears a plate of silver over the hole, and I wear the por- 

 tion cut out of his skull in this brooch. The accident — I suppose 

 my distress and remorse — brought about a rapprochement; we 

 became engaged, and are now man and wife." 



So the custom of wearing cranial disks need not be regarded 

 as completely done away with, even in our days. 



Various explanations have been offered to account for the tre- 

 panning of the skulls of the neolithic men ; but perhaps, before 

 considering them, it will be as well to notice another series of 

 phenomena, and that connected with the sepulchres of the same 

 people, as it belongs apparently to the same category. This is the 

 perforation of the tombs themselves. It has been observed re- 

 peatedly that among the dolmens, covered avenues, and kistvaens 

 of this race there is very generally one stone that has been tre- 

 panned — had a hole cut through it ; not only so, but that in their 

 circles of stones one gap has been almost invariably left so as to 

 make the circle incomplete. Trevethy Quoit, in Cornwall, has a 

 rectangular hole cut through the cap-stone. La Maison des Fees, 

 at Grammont, in He'rault, has the stone at the head perforated. 

 At Conflans was one of these monuments with not only a round 

 hole in the closing stone at the foot, but also the plug wherewith 

 the hole could at will be closed. It has been moved to the Muse'e 

 St.-Germain. In the Crimea and in the Caucasus, where the 

 same kind of monuments is found, the hole in one side, laboriously 

 bored through one slab, is a constant feature. 



We may, and probably ought to, connect the holed stones in 

 tombs with the holes in the skulls. And the most probable ex- 

 planation of both is that they were intended as openings whereby 

 the spirits might escape, and trepanning was employed on those 

 who suffered from epilepsy, which was regarded as possession by 

 an evil spirit. Broca says : " The art of trepanning was applied 

 to certain spontaneous maladies, and followed the opinion formed 

 of affections of the head in nervous disorders, as idiocy, convul- 

 sions, insanity, epilepsy. Maladies which science regards as nat- 

 ural struck the imagination of the ignorant, and they attributed 

 them to divine causes, to demons, to possession. Who can say 

 that trepanning, now a practice almost abandoned, was not em- 



