THE HUMAN SKULL 143 



and he did what I am sure any other medical 

 man would have done, prescribed them in child- 

 ren's doses. To his surprise he found that they did 

 not act as they would have done in the case of 

 a child, and he was obliged to administer the full 

 adult dose in order to secure the effect which he 

 desired. Here the body was as small or smaller 

 than that of most children, so that we can only 

 explain the facts by supposing that the resisting 

 power was in the nervous system, and that that 

 system had the adult powers though it fell so far 

 short of the adult size. Powers of this kind, what- 

 ever they may be, cannot then be measured by 

 the size of the organ with which they are associ- 

 ated. They belong to a region where weights and 

 measures avail us nothing. 



We have already seen that the shape of the skull, 

 so far as the cephalic index is concerned, and the 

 same is true within limits of the altitudinal 

 index, has no bearing upon the intellectual powers. < 

 We may go further than this and say that extreme 

 and unusual shapes of skull in otherwise normal 

 and non-pathological persons do not interfere 

 with the operations of the brain. Fashion has here 

 dictated for us a series of experiments which no 

 medical man would ever have dared to carry out. 

 Amongst many races the fashion of modifying the 

 shape of the head by keeping it wrapped in tight 

 bandages during the period of growth has held 

 sway, and the way of applying these bandages 

 with the consequent distortion has been varied in 

 several directions. In France, and more particu- 

 larly in South America, among the indigenous 



