PREFATORY NOTE 
During several years prior to 1895, Dr Manuel Antonio Muniz, 
some time Surgeon-General of the Army of Peru, traveled extensively 
through the ancient land of the Incas, and made large collections from 
the huacals and scattered graves of the Andean valleys and the des- 
iccated Piedmont zone inclining from the Cordillera toward Pacifie 
ocean. Lowland Peru is arid, and even the rugged highlands fronting 
the Pacifie receive but limited rainfall; and by reason of a combina- 
tion of conditions the air and so the soil are dry nearly all the year, 
and in some places the ground is saline or nitrous. Accordingly 
organic matter buried in the earth is preserved in a manner hardly 
conceivable to those accustomed to the conditions of humid lands; and 
thus Dr Muniz’ explorations were remarkably fruitful. 
The material collected from the long-neglected tombs of Peru by Dr 
Muniz comprised weapons of war and the chase, implements in wide 
variety, domestic utensils, costumery of skins and stuffs, and articles 
of adornment, all in considerable quantity; though his tastes and train- 
ing led him to devote especial attention to the somatic remains of the 
ancient people. His collection comprised something over a thousand 
crania; of these, nineteen were found to be trephined, several more 
than once. 
In 1893 Dr Muniz attended the “International Congress of Anthro- 
pology of the World’s Congress Auxiliary of the World’s Columbian 
Exposition” at Chicago, for the purpose of exhibiting and describing 
the trephined crania. His formal communication, translated into Eng- 
lish, forms the accompanying “summary statement.” Afterward he 
attended the Pan-American Medical Congress at Washington, and 
exhibited the collection informally; and still later he transferred its 
custody to the writer, on behalf of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 
for use in preparing the accompanying description of the remarkably 
interesting series of specimens of primitive surgery. 
On his return to Lima, toward the end of 1893, Dr Muniz had the mis- 
fortune to encounter a political movement; before it ended his house was 
sacked and burned, his library and his rich collections were destroyed, 
and he was exiled. Of allof the archeologic material brought together 
during his years of labor, only the collection of trephined crania remains; 
and the energetic collector has insured the safety of this remnant by 
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