300 GENERAL REMARKS 



Professor Virchow appears to consider these cases explicable by 

 the action of an arthritis chronica deformans ; Friedlowsky (' Wiener 

 Med. Jahrbiicher,' 1868, Bd. xv. p. 241 ; cit. Virchow, 1. c. p. 343) 

 is inclined to believe them to be due to intra-uterine disease ; in 

 some cases I should suggest that they were the result of strumous 

 disorganisation occurring in early life but recovered from, as we 

 have seen recorded in two of the cases here referred to, so completely 

 as to allow of a goodly old age being attained to. It is perhaps 

 difficult to assign any other ethnological bearing to them than that 

 which they have had conferred upon them by being discussed in 

 the important ethnological memoir referred to. 



The skeleton ' Goodmanham, xiv, ci,' already mentioned as having 

 had the last lumbar vertebra anchylosed to the first sacral, presented 

 another form of exostosis, which, as it did not affect the joints, 

 cannot be ascribed to an arthritis (see Adams, cit. Paget, ' Lancet/ 

 Nov. 1 8, 1875). An osseous upgrowth on the tibia, %" long by '6" 

 in height and -35" in width, roughened and perforated here and 

 there, occupies the part of the popliteal line which is common to the 

 popliteus and the inner head of the soleus ; the bone is further 

 beset by rough and by smooth exostosis on its border below this 

 level, and is finally joined, by a stalactitic growth 1* 25" long and 

 •7" thick, to the fibula. 



That particular form of exostosis which produces in its most 

 usual form what is called the puerperal osteophyte is by no means 

 unrepresented in prehistoric series. As in modern times also, it is 

 not confined to the female sex exclusively ; a typically male skull 

 of the brachycepalic type from a grave in a barrow at Gardham 

 exemplifying it. 



Finally, we have in the long-barrow series from Market Weighton, 

 Rodmarton, and Swell, that form of hyperostosis which developes 

 masses of bones along the supraciliary ridges, as repeatedly observed 

 in Australian and Tasmanian skulls (see ' Catalogue Ost. Series, 

 Royal College of Surgeons,' vol. ii. 1853, Nos. 5317, 5318, 5324, 

 5345), as also in foreign skulls of prehistoric times, e. g. the Danish 

 skulls from the Island of Seeland, as noted by Virchow (' Arch, fur 

 Anthr.' iv. p. 66; see also Spengel, ibid. viii. p. 59, 1875, and ' Journ. 

 Anth. Inst.' Oct. 1875, P- I 7°- 



