1885.] PROCEEDINGS OF UXITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 411 



tributions to North American Ethnology an elaborate paper upon the 

 same subject, in which he brings together all that had been previously 

 written.* His unparalleled advantages in becoming familiar with medi- 

 cal literature enabled him to exhaust the subject up to 1882. Since that 

 time little of any account has been published. Dr. Fletcher discovered 

 that in treating of this subject be had to deal with two entirely different 

 sets of i)henomena — the one had reference to the living, the other to the 

 dead. He also tells us "there are three processes by which an open- 

 ing in the cranium can be methodically produced — by rotary move- 

 ment, by cutting [sawing IJ, and by scraping." 



Trephining upon the living, if successful and the patient recovered, 

 was followed by cicatrizing; if the patient died under the treatment, 

 the wound would present scarcely a different appearance from the cut 

 made upon the skull of the dead. It is more than probable, however, 

 tbat even among savages a different method and instrumentation would 

 be used in the two cases. There are on record accounts of surgical 

 operations performed upon the living, even among very savage races. 

 Dr. Fletcher makes allusion to several localities in which this practice 

 exists. All of the examples of aboriginal trephining in America were 

 more than probably ^os^ mortem. Those alluded to by Mr. Oilman in 

 the American Naturalist, to which he has added several examples since, 

 and the specimens figured by Mr. Squier, show no certain marks of 

 cicatrizing. 



The National Museum has recently received from Dr. W. H. Jones, 

 U. S. N., the most remarkable specimen of post-mortem trephining 

 which has yet come to light. It is a skull obtained from Chaclacayo, 

 near Chosica, a mountain in Peru, near Lima, about 4,000 feet high. 

 Three mummies — man, woman, and child — were obtained from one 

 grave. From the same place were obtained several skulls of peculiar 

 shape, including the one under consideration. The specimen belongs 

 to the elongated Inca type. The section or roundel was taken from the 

 center of the frontal bone, and the opening is about 2J inches in length 

 and nearly 2 inches in width. The outline of the cutting is a polygon. 

 Eight distinct furrows are visible upon the surface of the skull. The 

 work seems to have been done in the most bungling manner. One furrow 

 must have been cut across the space longitudinally, and the parts on 

 either side of this main furrow were taken away piecemeal, by a com- 

 bination of furrows and fractures. At the extremity of some of the 

 furrows scratches are visible, which seem to indicate that the bone was 

 removed by means of a chipped stone implement. 



It is impossible to conjecture the design of this singular custom. We 

 are not able to say even whether the bone was taken out just previous 

 to or after death. No rondelles or fragments of the bone removed 

 have been found in this continent similar to those discovered by M. 

 Prunieres. 



*■ Ou Prehistoric Trephining and Cranial Amulets, by Robert Fletcher, M. R. C. S. 

 Eng., acting assistant surgeon U. S. A., Cent. N. A. Ethnology, VI. 



