PREHISTORIC TREPANNING. 541 



ployed among the first men as a means of letting demons escape 

 out of the system, by opening for them a door of exit ? " 



" I ask/' says Broca again, " for what motive these operations 

 were performed, not always, indeed, but usually, on young sub- 

 jects, often on mere children ; and I venture to suggest that they 

 were due to some superstition, and formed part of a ceremony 

 of initiation into some sort of priesthood. This would, indeed, 

 suppose that there existed a sacerdotal caste among the neolithic 

 people, and there can be little doubt that they did possess an 

 organized form of worship. The cranial disk inserted in a skull 

 after death, what can it mean but some vague belief in another 

 life ? If it be objected that the cranial mutilations were too 

 grave to be accepted as a religious ceremony, I answer that tre- 

 panning is not in itself a very dangerous operation. If it is so 

 often attended by fatal results nowadays, it is because recourse is 

 had to it only in desperate cases. What produces death in so 

 many instances where trepanning is resorted to, is not the tre- 

 panning, but the cerebral congestion which one endeavors to re- 

 lieve by the operation. Besides, religious exaltation knows no 

 limits. If certain divinities were ready to accept a scrap of skull 

 in place of an entire human victim, they may have passed as re- 

 markably indulgent. It is well known that among the negroes of 

 western Africa some individuals will disembowel themselves as 

 an initiation into sanctity, or to prove the efficacy of certain 

 charms. Some of these men perish, but others recover, and such 

 become saints among their tribe." 



We are disposed rather to accept Dr. Broca's first suggestion 

 than the last, and to regard trepanning among the prehistoric 

 men as having had a therapeutic motive. 



The perforation of the tomb was almost certainly intended as 

 a door of exit for spirits. Even in later times, when the dead were 

 burned, holes were often bored or knocked in the urns that con- 

 tained the ashes, for the same purpose. Some cinerary urns have 

 been found with little windows, as it were, made in them, and a 

 piece of glass placed over the hole. Macrobius, in his Saturna- 

 lia, quotes an Etruscan belief that a door should be opened for 

 the spirits to pass in and out. 



The writer remembers a case of a dying woman some few 

 years ago in Sussex. She was gasping, and apparently was under- 

 going the last struggle in great distress. The nurse went to the 

 window and opened it. At once the dying woman breathed 

 deeply and expired. The writer said to the nurse, "Why did 

 you open the window ? " The answer given was, " Surely you 

 wouldn't have her soul go up the chimney ? " 



One can understand how that, if a piece of skull had been re- 

 garded as in contact with a demon or spirit, it would be respected 



