54 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 6 1 



occiput. The oldest parts of the population, except perhaps at Nasca, 

 seem to have deformed less generally than those just before the ar- 

 rival of the whites. The frequency and intensity of the deformation 

 differed according to groups and possibly clans, of the people. They 

 practiced no filing, cutting or chipping of the teeth, and no other 

 mutilation which would leave marks on the skeleton. In the Chimu 

 region, there may have been something like the nose-cutting among 

 the Apache and other tribes. 



These people of the coast have spread along the valleys to the 

 foothills of the Cordillera, and have probably in some instances 

 penetrated into the mountains. Meanwhile, however, they became 

 in many though not all localities more or less mixed, or rather 

 mingled, with dolicho- or near dolichocephalic elements, which 

 must have come from or across the mountains. In a few instances 

 a cemetery will be found near the coast in which this oblong-headed 

 type predominates or is almost the only one present. 



Pathologically, so far as shown by the bones, the people of the 

 coast were decidedly freer from diseases than would be an average 

 white population of such numbers. Some systemic diseases well 

 known to us were seemingly entirely absent before the advent of 

 the Spaniards. On the other hand, there existed several morbid 

 conditions which may not be known or are very rare among the 

 whites. The absent diseases were rachitis, osteomalacia, and probably 

 syphilis, tuberculosis, and cancer. The diseases peculiar to the coast, 

 were symmetric osteoporosis of the skull, in infancy and early child- 

 hood ; a strange progressive arthritic process affecting the head of 

 the femur and the cotyloid cavity in the adult or rarely the adolescent, 

 called here from its most characteristic feature the " mushroom- 

 head " femur (arthritis deformans) ; and characteristic exostoses in 

 the distal part of the auditory meatus, tending toward its occlusion. 

 There was a great scarcity of fractures, but on the other hand there 

 were everywhere numerous traumatic lesions of the skull, showing 

 fighting and perhaps executions. 



Notwithstanding the frequency of wounds of the skull such as 

 would lend themselves to operation, trephining was very rare on 

 the coast, if practiced there at all. The instances found were all 

 at places within easy reach of the mountainous districts where trepa- 

 nation is known to have been common. As to other operations, in the 

 valley of Chicama two lower limbs were seen, both in the possession 

 of Dr. Velez Lopez, now of Trujillo, in which the foot had been 



