474 ' PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I7OO. 



Nor can such distempers possibly affect those of adult ages, so as to enlarge 

 their skulls; because all the bones are by that lime become solid and firmly knit 

 together, so as to be incapiible of further growth ; and hence it is that these 

 maladies are incident to children, and them only, whilst their skulls are mem- 

 branous, rather than bony. And daily experience assures us, that unless such 

 diseases be timely removed by the physician's or surgeon's art, or overcome so 

 early by the strength of nature, as that the children have time enough to out- 

 grow this disproportion in their heads, by the bulk of their body coming up to 

 it before it arises to too exorbitant a degree of magnitude they all die in their 

 infancy, and their unshapely skulls are easily distinguished from all others by the 

 large fontanel, or aperture in the vertex of the head, which remains membra- 

 nous, and never becomes like the rest of the skull, a bony substance. And 

 that they cannot possibly arrive at manhood is plain ; for this monstrous and 

 unequal growth, or rather swelling of their heads, meeting with no restraint, 

 but still increasing, when it arrives to such a certain degree, that its extravagant 

 dimensions become inconsistent with the natural functions of the body, the 

 animal economy must sink under the pressure of such a load, and the whole 

 machine tend to its dissolution, as not being able to bear any longer with so 

 highly morbid a disposition, in so principal and necessary a part of life as the 

 brain. 



I shall not deny but by some accident a disproportion sometimes between the 

 head and rest of the body, in such as are grown up to the complete stature of 

 man, sometimes happens ; yet a disproportion of this kind, though it may be 

 very conspicuous, and presently taken notice of as unseemly, is never so extra- 

 ordinary as to be very considerable in itself. For, the circumference of a man's 

 head of the common size, is usually about 2'2 inches ; and if we chance to see 

 one of 15 or 26 on a man of ordinary height, which certainly is very rare, it 

 appears large and remarkable ; but should there be found a head still larger, 

 as of 28 or IQ inches in ambit, which, for the reasons above-mentioned, has 

 scarcely ever happened, unless where the proportion of the other parts of the 

 body were such as necessarily required it, such a one would be accounted mon- 

 strous. Yet the circumference of the head, of which this large forehead-bone 

 was a part, amounted to something above a third part more than the largest of 

 these measures ; for I compute its dimensions, when entire and covered with 

 the hairy-scalp, to have been about 44 inches round, and therefore must have 

 had a body belonging to it that bore a proper conformity to this spacious cir- 

 cumference. 



Nor do I apprehend so great a stature as this in a human body, though it be 

 indeed extraordinary, any way absurd or repugnant to the course of nature ; 



