698 GENERAL REMARKS 



Museum, three in the Pathological Museum, and two in the 

 Ethnological Series. Of the three in the Pathological Museum, 

 one. No. 157, belonged to a man who died at the age of 73, and 

 the second, third, and fourth cervical vertebrae are anchylosed to 

 each other just as tlae atlas is anchylosed to the occipital. In this 

 case, as in Friedlowsky'Sj the posterior arch of the atlas is left 

 incomplete, an interval of two millimetres separating it into two 

 halves. The second belonged to a boy who^ after suffering from 

 various scrofulous affections, died with cough, purulent expectora- 

 tion^ hectic, and vomicse in the right lung, as well as extensive 

 paralysis from, no doubt, encroachment effected by the odontoid 

 upon the medulla oblongata. Of these two cases the first 

 resembles one of the two recorded by Virchow from the Berlin 

 Museum, in that death took place at an advanced age and without 

 any recorded symptoms of disease connected with the lesion in 

 question ; the second resembles the second of those cases, in that 

 long disease was the cause of death. The third specimen from the 

 Oxford Pathological Department, No. 261, is the skull of a lunatic, 

 purchased with the Collection of Schroder van der Kolk, the 

 calvarial bones of which present, according to the Catalogue, ' a 

 rugous wormeaten aj)pearance, a consequence either of syphilis or 

 tinea.' Our fourth specimen was obtained from a E,oman cemetery 

 at York, in which large numbers of skeletons were found buried in 

 j)tdei with very little regard to any consideration, except that of 

 making the largest possible amount of room for the largest possible 

 amount of bodies to be interred. No clue to its nationality, except 

 in the political sense of subjectdom, therefore is available. The 

 specimen however is of interest with reference to the question of the 

 foetal or congenital origin of the anchylosis, as not only the spheno- 

 basilar synchondrosis would appear never to have been closed, but 

 also the basilar portion of the occipital bone would appear to have 

 been entirely absorbed, and the arch of the atlas to have coalesced 

 all but perfectly with the occipital, two circular orifices only 

 remaining for the outlets of the first spinal nerves. It is of 

 interest further, as combining with this anchylosis, firstly the 

 'plastic deformation' of Dr. Barnard Davis, the 'basilar impression' 

 of Virchow (/. c.) ; and secondly, a flattening and widening out of 

 the cranial vault, the height from the edge of the anterior arch of 

 the atlas next to the base of the brain up to the vertex being only 

 4" as against a maxim width of 6'2", as to give the skull what 

 Dr. Barnard Davis calls a ' discoid,' and Virchow (/. c.) a ' molen- 



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