696 GENERAL REMARKS 



remains from the long barrows an ' ancbylosed condition of two or 

 more of the cervical or upper dorsal vertebrse ' had been not rarely- 

 observed by him, whilst it was within his experience very un- 

 common and almost unknown in the round barrows. This condi- 

 tion of thing's he thoug-ht was indicative of some peculiarity, and 

 that peculiarity the trog-lodytic mode of life of the people in whose 

 remains it had been observed, and whose heads and necks he 

 supposed would have been very much exposed to violent concussions 

 ag-ainst the sides and roofs of their narrow pas^ag-es and doorways. 

 Without discussing whether ' anchylosis of the vertebrse may have 

 resulted from such violence,' I would say that I have observed the 

 morbid condition of which Dr. Thurnam writes in many vertebral 

 columns of much later times than those of the cave-dwellers. 

 The Pathological Department of the Oxford University Museum 

 contains, under the Catalogue-numbers 159-165, seven specimens 

 with every appearance of being of modern date ; and the magnifi- 

 cent Catalogue of the Leyden Anatomical Museum ^ has ten Plates 

 (Taf. xxxviii-Taf xlvii) devoted to this particular form of disease. 

 Of the two specimens of this anchylosis which I have met with 

 amongst prehistoric skeletons, one came from the long barrow at 

 Upper Swell, described by me at p. 533 supra, and the other 

 belonged to the skeleton ' Paulinus, iv. 2, cxiii. 5/ which came 

 from a round barrow, and indeed may be taken as being a strikingly 

 good representative of the skeletons of the bronze-period. The 



^ Museum Anatomicuui Academiae Lugduno-Batavfe. Descriptum ab Edvardo 

 Sandifort. 1793-1835. There can be no doubt that this morbid condition is the same 

 as the one spoken of by Rokitansky (Manual of Pathological Anatomy, vol. iii. pp. 

 133, 134, and 217), and described by him as presenting an appearance as if the 'bony 

 matter had been poured in a stream over larger surfaces of a bone and had then 

 coagulated.' Rokitansky adds, ' We are quite ignorant of any general condition of 

 the system to which this can be attributed.' In default of any suggestion of his, it 

 may be well to add the following short account of the malady from a later writer, 

 Genczig, who in an Inaugural Dissertation (Ueber Exostosen und Osteophyten) read 

 in 1846 speaks of the malady as follows, p. 14 : ' Exostosen der Wirbelknochen. Am 

 kaufigsten findet sich ein Osteophyt welches in der Form einer im Flusse erstarrten 

 Masse die vordere Flache der Wirbelkorper in geringerer oder grosserer Ausdehnung 

 mit einander verblndet. Bisweilen findet sich dies Osteophyt ein hciheren Alter ohne 

 andenveitige Krankheiten der Wirbelsiiule, bisweilen aber auch bei Caries oder 

 Tuberculose der Wirbelkorper.' I have myself observed this condition in the vertebral 

 column of a Newfoundland dog and of a horse, which are preserved in the University 

 Museum ; it is said to be normally present in the dipodidae and dasypodidse, animals, 

 it is right to add, of burrowing habits ; but it is also present in many cetacea ; and 

 I find that its occurrence as an abnormality is so well known, as to have furnished 

 commentators with a not very satisfactory explanation of Aristotle's twice repeated 

 statement as to the cervical region of the lion consisting of one single bone (see 

 A F. A. Wiegmann, Observationes Zoologies Critica? in Aristotelis Historiam Anima- 

 lium, Berolini 1826; Arist. Hist. An. i. 1, ad fin.; De Part. Au. iv. 10). 



