CEO-MAGNON SKULLS AND BONES. 109 



yataghan. Such a tibia, moreover, is flattened on front and back, not on the sides. Of its two faces (No. 4, 

 fig. 47), one is posterior (E N I), and is the normal posterior face, widened in proportion to the amount of flat- 

 tening, but not otherwise modified. The other face is anterior (E A I), formed by the union of the outer (E A) 

 and the inner face (A I). There is now no anterior edge ; the crest of the tibia (A) is hut a slight prominence ; 

 and this is sometimes so feeble that it is with difficulty traced upwards to the anterior tuberosity, or tubercle 

 for the insertion of the ligament of the patella. By comparing the dotted lines E' A', I' A', which represent 

 the two anterior faces of the normal tibia, with the line E A I, the reader will readily see how the crest of 

 the tibia is now represented merely by a very obtuse angle, but still opposite to the nutritive foramen. 



It is clear that of all the forms represented in the four diagrams (fig. 47) this is the only one offering at 

 first sight a certain resemblance to that of the tibias from Cro-Magnon ; but really it differs from them the 

 most. The sharp edge of the sabre, which in the latter corresponds with the crest of the tibia, answers 

 here to the outer edge that is, to the insertion of the interosseous aponeurosis. The thick edge of the blade 

 in the old tibias falls on the nutritive foramen and is directly behind ; whereas that of the tibia rachitically 

 flattened falls on the inner edge and is turned inwards. The reader may complete the parallel by 

 comparing the details of No. z, fig. 47, with those of No. 4, fig. 47, which show that the conformation of the 

 Cro-Magnon tibias is at all points the contrary of rachitic malformations. 



M. Pruner-Bey has met this view of the subject with the statement that these are the results of 

 constitutional rickets, whilst the Old Man of Cro-Magnon had rickets only in infancy. I must reply that 

 rickets is always constitutional and always a disease of infancy. How could a malady, consisting of an 

 abnormal development of the skeleton and having its principal lesions near the subepiphysial cartilages, 

 attack adult subjects? Adults, it is true, have a disease known as softening of the bone, very rare and 

 very severe, which is neither more nor less constitutional than rickets, and which can also, misshape the 

 bones ; but the deformation in this case is quite otherwise than that by rickets, and in other respects it 

 has nothing to do with the matter. The distinction established by M. Pruner-Bey between constitutional 

 and infantile rickets is, then, quite imaginary. He seeks otherwise himself to prove that we have here a 

 constitutional rickets, since he believes he finds traces of this disease in other bones, such as the femur, the 

 ulna, and the ribs. The slight arching, however, in the upper part of the thigh-bone is much higher up than 

 the curvatures produced by rickets ; the somewhat bowed shape of the upper part of the ulna is never seen 

 in rickety ulnas, where the curvature, very rare itself, is at the middle of the bone ; and, lastly, as to the 

 ribs, they are very thick compared with their breadth, whilst rickety ribs are wide and thin. M. Pruner- 

 Bey, then, is here in formal contradiction to the common ideas of pathological anatomy. 



Lastly, if the compression of the upper end of the tibias has been observed as yet only at Cro-Magnon, 

 we might ask if this peculiar condition of the bone was not due to some old unknown disease, and, 

 putting aside all that is known in pathology, call it a special rachitism which flattened without 

 bending the tibias, which deformed their upper half only, without affecting the fibulas, which left neither 

 rarefaction nor eburnation of the bone in recovery, which thickened the ribs, bent the ulnas and femurs 

 where they could most resist the curvature, and not where they were weakest, and which, lastly, permitted 

 the skeleton to take on a gigantic growth. This interpretation would be simply a pathological mistake, 

 logical at least. The tibias, however, from the Caves of Gibraltar, that of the Quaternary Man of Clichy, 

 the tibias from the dolmens of Chamant, of Maintenon, and of many other dolmens examined in France 

 and elsewhere, present exactly this same conformation, which has its maximum in the Anthropomorphic 

 Apes, and of which also we find traces in several skeletons of N'egroes. Is it required, then, of us, because 

 the tibias from Cro-Magnon, older than the others, are also more like those of the great Apes, to give 

 over to rachitism the majority of prehistoric men ? Do we not see that a strictly presentable hypothesis, 



