54 



CHAPTER IV. 



TRACES OF UNITY IN THE SKULL AND 

 VERTEBRAL COLUMN. 



THE conviction that the skull was made up of modified 

 spinal vertebrae flashed upon the mind of Oken at the 

 sight of a deer's skull, blanched, and partly dis- 

 jointed, by the weather, which skull caught his eye as 

 he made his way down one of the wooded southern 

 slopes of the Hartz Mountains in the autumn of 1806. 

 " Er ist eine Wirbelsaule ! fur es mir wie ein Bliz durch 



Mark und Bein und seit dieser Zeit ist der 



Schadel eine Wirbelsaule." * A month or two later this 

 conviction became confirmed and matured by an exami- 

 nation of certain skulls in Dr. Alber's museum at 

 Bremen ; and before another year was over he made it 

 the subject of an inaugural address delivered at the 

 University of Jena, and printed shortly afterwards.f 

 As usually happens, however, the thoughts of others, 

 in this case of Goethe, Autenreith, Frank and Kiel- 

 meyer, had already moved in the same direction. In 

 1820, in a sketch of his own anatomical labours, 

 Goethe shows that the bones of the skull may be 

 deduced from those of the vertebral column, and in a 



* Isis, 1817, p. 511. 



t Ueber die Bedeutung der Schadelknocken : Programme beim Antritt 

 der Professur. 4to. 1807. 



