1880.] 



on Fashion in Deformity. 



399 



Fig. 6. 



among people who can have had no intercourse with one another. It 

 appears, in fact, to have originated independently, in many quarters, 

 from some natural impulse common to the human race. Wlien it 

 once became an established custom in any tribe, it was almost inevi- 

 table that it should continue, until put an end to by the destruction 

 either of the tribe itself, or of its peculiar institutions, through the 

 intervention of some superior force, for a standard of excellence in 

 form, which could not be changed in those who possessed it, was 

 naturally followed by all who did not wish their children to run the 

 risk of the social degradation which would follow the neglect of such 

 a custom. " Failure properly to mould the cranium of her offspring 

 gives to the Chinook matron the reputation of a lazy and undutiful 

 mother, and subjects the neglected children to the ridicule of their young 

 companions, so despotic is fashion." * It is related in the narrative 

 of Commodore Wilkes' United States Exploring Expedition,! that "at 

 Niculuita Mr. Drayton obtained the drawing of a child's head, of the 

 Walla wall a tribe (Fig. 6), that had just been released from its bandages, 



in order to secure its flattened shape. Both 

 the parents showed great delight at the 

 success they had met with in effecting this 

 distortion." 



Many of the less severe alterations of 

 the form to which the head is subjected are 

 undesigned, resulting only from the mode 

 in which the child is carried or dressed 

 during infancy. Thus habitually carrying 

 the child on one arm appears to produce 

 an obliquity in the form of the skull 

 which is retained to a greater or less 

 degree all through life. The practice fol- 

 lowed by nomadic people of carrying their 

 infants fastened to stiff pillows or boards, 

 commonly causes a flattening of the occi- 

 put ; and the custom of dressing the child's 

 head with tightly fitting bandages, still 

 common in many parts of the Continent, and even used in England 

 within the memory of many living people, produces an elongated and 

 laterally constricted form.J In France this is well known, and so 

 common is it in the neighbourhood of Toulouse, that a special form of 

 head produced in this manner is known as the '^deformation Tou- 

 lousaine." 



Of the ancient notices of the custom of purposely altering the form 



Flat-headed Indian Child. 



* Bancroft, op. cit. vol. i. p. 238. 



t Vol. iv. p. 388. 



X After the lecture a gentleman of advanced age showed me a circular depres- 

 sion round the upper part of his head, which he believed had been produced in 

 this manner, as the custom was still prevailing at the time of his birth in the dis- 

 trict of Norfolk, of which he was a native. 



