UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 301 



II. Rickets. 



I am inclined to believe that we have an example of the working 

 of what has been called an ' English disease,' viz. Rickets, in one skull 

 of the bronze period, ' Rudstone, lxiii. 4,' ' British Barrows,' p. 248. 

 The calvaria of this cranium is so large relatively to its small facial 

 skeleton and lower jaw, and has so distinctly the subquadrate out- 

 lines which we have learnt * to recognise as indicative of that false 

 cerebral hypertrophy the essence of which consists in an increase, 

 not of the nerve cells, but the interstitial neuroglia, that we are 

 probably justified in considering it to have taken this shape and 

 size in accommodation to a rickety brain. 



The skull appears, from its small mastoids and small teeth and 

 jaws, to have belonged to a woman, and somewhat difficult though 

 the size and weight of the entire skull and the considerable de- 

 velopment of the supraciliary ridges may make it to believe this, 

 the existence of a considerable quantity of stalagmite-like exostosis 

 on the interior of the frontal bone lends some additional probability 

 to this view as to its sex, as does also the comparative vertically of 

 the forehead and of the posterior part of the parietals. As rickets 

 may appear, as Sir W. Jenner (1. c. p. 466) has shown, in any child 

 whose mother may have been in a depressed condition during the 

 period of gestation, no matter whether the father may have been in 

 * robust health and the hygienic conditions most favourable/ there 

 is no need for wondering at its appearance in a semi-civilised 

 community, where early childbearing and hard labour would usually 

 be the lot of the females. In the present case the malady had been 

 outlived, and the subject of it, to judge from the great wear of the 

 teeth and the obliteration of the skull sutures, had reached old age. 

 The teeth are small in size, and only three molars appear to have 

 been implanted in the jaws, two on the left, one on the right side. 



The measurements of this skull are as follows : — 



4, ^ / Interzygomatic width . . 4-7" 

 o 1 ) Interangular width of lower jaw 3-2" 

 g;*g J Depth of symphysis . . 0.9" 

 rt S t Width of ramus . . .1-2" 

 Cephalic index 7^ 



Weight of skull with lower jaw but 

 with loss of basicranial bones = 1 lb. 

 7i<>z. 

 West, 'Diseases of Children,' Lectures X and XLI, pp. 134 and 7 2 9» 5 th edition, 



Extreme length 



Extreme breadth . 



Vertical height 



Circumference 



Length of face from fronto 

 nasal suture to edge of 

 alveolar process . . . 2-5 



7-4 



5-7" 



5.8' 



2 ,. 4 ' 



