12 PBEHlSTOIilC TKEPfllNING. 



taiiily to more than 500 years before the Christian era. While, of course, 

 no instrument of this kind could have been known in the neolithic age, yet 

 an opening by terebration could have been obtained with any pointed tool. 

 M. Prunieres says that the shepherds of La Lozfere practice it to this day, to 

 relieve sheep of the "staggers." The head of the animal is held between the 

 knees of the operator who fixes the point of his large sheath-knife in the 

 skull, and by rotation of the handle between his hands a hole is speedily pro- 

 duced. A similar practice prevails in Germany, according to Vecken- 

 stedt, the operation being performed by the shepherds in order to "burst 

 a bladder in the inside of the head of the sheep." But all such openings 

 are necessarily round, with nearly perpendicular edges, while the surgical 

 trephining of prehistoric times is characterized by elliptical openings and 

 by obliquely beveled edges. 



As regards the second method, by cutting, no doubt flint saws might 

 have been employed for the purpose, but it would have been impossible to 

 produce the even ellipsis, with its broad bevel, in such a manner. A polyg- 

 onal-shaped aperture could only have resulted. 



There remains the process by scraping. In some of the South Sea 

 Islands trephining is practiced in this manner, and, indeed, the exfoliative 

 trepan of modern surgery provides for a similar process. Broca presented 

 to the Society of Anthropologj^ of Paris, in I87G, some skulls upon which 

 he had himself produced precise counterparts of neolithic trephining by 

 scraping with a piece of broken glass." The apertures were elliptical, the 

 long axis being in the direction of the to-and -fro motion of the scraper, and 

 the edges were broadly beveled. It might seem, at first, that this nmst 

 have been a very slow and barbai'ous operation, but when it is remembered 

 that the evidence points strongly to the belief that trephining was practiced 

 upon the very young, the objection, to a great extent, disappears. It took 

 Broca nearly an hour to produce the opening in a hard adult ci'anium, but 

 in a child's skull it required but four minutes to attain the same result. 

 Again, in July, 1877, Broca presented to the same society the skull of a 

 two months' old puppy, upon which he had performed the operation of tre- 

 phining with a piece of flint from Cro Magnon, and, although the flint was 



'"Bull. !>Of. d'authroi). (\v Paris, 1876. 2"" s6r., xi, rili. 



