NOTES ON PALEOPATHOLOGY. 679 



NOTES ON PALEOPATHOLOGY. 



By B. W. SHUFELDT, M. D. 



ANIMALS that lived during the past ages of the world, and 

 now long since extinct, must have suffered, it would seem, 

 from many injuries quite similar to those now sustained by their 

 descendants of the present epoch. So far as the writer is aware, 

 the discovery of the evidences of such conditions is of extremely 

 rare occurrence, and the literature pertaining thereto practically 

 a blank page.* Among fossil invertebrate remains I do not recall 

 ever having either observed or heard of a single instance, al- 

 though during geologic times many forms of the invertebrata 

 must have perished when such parts of their economies as usually 

 fossilize exhibited evidences of disease, and would thus be ob- 

 served by the paleontologist when those specimens came to be 

 discovered and examined. 



With respect to the vertebrata, however, I have been some- 

 what more fortunate in this matter, as I can show in the course 

 of the present article. Still, even among them one may examine 

 many hundreds of specimens before he will meet with one of their 

 fossilized bones which shows that it was diseased at the time of 

 the death of its owner. It is one of the very rarest of things. In 

 two or three different articles, several years ago and later, I pub- 

 lished a number of instances where, in the preparation of the 

 skeletons of existing birds, I had discovered a variety of patho- 

 logical conditions of the bones. f Many, if not the majority of 

 those cases, however, were the results of gunshot wounds, and, of 

 course, it goes without saying that that class of injuries would 

 not occur among fossils ; and their very absence is one good rea- 

 son for the greater rarity of examples of disease in the skeletons 

 in these extinct forms, as one may easily imagine. 



Several months ago Prof. E. D. Cope, of Philadelphia, placed 

 in my hands for description some fifteen hundred specimens of 

 fossil birds from the Pliocene of southwestern Oregon. Here 

 then, indeed, was an excellent opportunity to investigate such a 

 matter, for surely among several hundreds of bones we would be 



* Paleopathology (Greek ira\ai6s, ancient, and irddos, a suffering), the word used in the 

 title of this paper, is a term here proposed under which may be described all diseased or 

 pathological conditions found fossilized in the remains of extinct or fossil animals. 



f The following are the principal articles of mine on this subject: (1) Notes on a Few 

 of the Diseases and Injuries in Birds, The American Naturalist, vol. xv, April, 1881, pp. 

 283-285 ; (2) Notes on the Diseases of Birds' Beaks, The Journal of Comparative Medicine 

 and Surgery, vol. viii, No. 2, April, 188*7, pp. 181, 182 (illustrated) ; (3) Examples of Frac- 

 tures and their Union in the Bones of Birds, The New York Medical Journal, vol. xlviii, No. 

 26, New York, December 29, 1888, pp. 1U, 715 (illustrated). 



