66 ANTIQUITIES IN TENNESSEE. 



the nasal bones are thickened, roughened, and rounded. The occipital bone shows 

 the effects of pressure, whicli is much more marked in the right parietal protuber 

 ance, it being much fuller and thrown further back than the left. The upper 

 extremities of the occipital bone are separated by a transverse suture about one 

 inch in length. 



I have shown by careful observations that bones taken from stone coffins and 

 burial mounds at Nashville, Franklin, Old Town, in Tennessee, and at Hickman, 

 in Kentucky, bear unmistakable marks of the ravages of syphilis. The supposition 

 has been advanced that these bones presented merely " traces of periostitis," which 

 were not due to the action of the syphilitic poison, because "it is uncommon to find 

 shin bones of adults belonginff to races clad in skins, and with the lower extremities 

 exposed, in which there is not more or less roughness or hyperostosis along the 

 tibial shafts." So far from these evidences of the action of syphilis being mere 

 traces of periostitis, and constituting mere " roughness or hyperostosis along the 

 tibial shafts," the bones are in many instances thoroughly diseased, enlarged, and 

 thickened, with the medullary cavity completely obliterated by the effects of 

 inflammatory action, and with the surface eroded in many places. These erosions 

 resemble, in all respects, those caused by syphilis, and attended with ulceration 

 of the skin and soft parts during life. Furthermore, the disease was not confined 

 to the "tibial shafts;" the bones of the cranium, the fibula, the ulna, the radius, 

 the clavicle, the sternum, and the bones of the face exhibited unmistakable traces 

 oi periostitis, ostitis, endostitis, caries, necrosis, and exostosis. The medullary mem- 

 brane was evidently involved in many cases to an equal degree with the periosteum; 

 the difference in the appearance of the products of the syphilitic disease being due 

 most probably to the great quantity of fat and other loose tissues, among which 

 the vessels of the medullary membrane run. When thin sections of these bones 

 were carefully examined with the naked eye, and by the aid of magnifying glasses, 

 portions were found resembling cancellous tissue from the enlargement and irregular 

 erosions of the Haversian canals, and increase in the number and size of the lacunie; 

 whilst other portions presented the hardened condition known as sclerosis. I 

 observed in these bones, and especially in those of the cranium, the various forms 

 of osseous ulcerations which have been described by pathologists as characteristic 

 of the action of syphilis, viz., rounded ulcerations with glazed surfaces, and with 

 marked hardening or eburnification of the bone beneath ; tuberculated ulcerations, 

 dependent not only on periosteal deposit but upon chronic inflammation of the 

 compact tissue itself; reticulated ulcerations, in wliich a network of periosteal 

 deposit had been formed, and which had been perforated by ulcers, subsequently 

 forming and assuming the annular type. That these diseases of the bones were 

 not due to mechanical injury, or to exposure to cold, is evident from the fact that 

 they were almost universally symmetrical in their manifestations ; thus, when one 

 tibia was diseased, the other was similarly affected, both as to the position and 

 nature of the disease. In like manner both fibula? presented similar evidences of 

 periostitis, ostitis, and exostosis ; this was true also of the bones of the forearm 

 (radius and ulna), and of the clavicle. 



The symmetrical distribution of the effects of disease on the two sides of the 



