ON OUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE OP THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 471 



the chain of our primate ancestors, by many regarded as of the highest 

 importance. 



To this momentous interpretation, which is now accepted by nearly 

 all naturalists, the renowned pathologist of Berlin, Robert Virchow, 

 set up the most obstinate opposition. He went to Leyden for the special 

 purpose of contradicting the idea that the Pithecanthropus is a transi- 

 tional form, but met with little success. His contention that the skull 

 and the femur of Pithecanthropus could not have belonged together, 

 that the first belonged to an ape and the second to a man, was rejected 

 at once by the expert paleontologists present, who declared unani- 

 mously that, in view of the extremely careful and conscientious account 

 of the discovery "there could not the slightest doubt exist that the 

 remains belonged to one and the same individual." Virchow further 

 asserted that a pathological exostosis in the femur of Pithecanthropus 

 likewise testified to its human character, for only by the most careful 

 attention by human hands can such disorders be cured. Immediately 

 thereupon the famous paleontologist Marsh showed a number of simi- 

 lar exostoses upon the leg bones of wild apes, who had had no "nursing 

 care," and yet had recovered. Every great osteological collection con- 

 tains similar specimens; experienced hunters know that fractures and 

 inflammations of bones in foxes, hares, harts, roebucks, etc., are often 

 healed quite well, without the intervention of man, while those animals 

 are in a state of freedom. Finally, Virchow asserted that the deep 

 notch between the orbital edge and the low skullcap of Pithecanthro- 

 piis — a sign of a very deep conformation of the temporal fossa — were 

 decisive for the ape-like character of the skull, and that such a for- 

 mation never occurs in man. A few weeks later the paleontologist 

 Nehring (who from the beginning had supported the just conclusion of 

 Dubois) showed that exactly the same formation was presented by a 

 human skull from Santos, in Brazil. 



Virchow had formerly the same want of success with his " patho- 

 logical significance of the skulls of the lower races of man." The 

 famous skulls of Neanderthal, of Spy, of Moulin-Quignoii, of La IsTau- 

 lette, etc. — which taken together are the interesting isolated remains 

 of an extinct lower race of man standing between Pithecanthropus and 

 the races of the present day — these were all declared by Virchow to 

 be pathological products; indeed, the sagacious pathologist at last made 

 the incredible assertion that " all organic variations are pathological;" 

 that they are only produced through disease. According to this all 

 our noblest cultivated products, our hunting hounds and our horses, 

 our noble grains and our fine table fruit, are, alas! diseased natural 

 objects that have arisen by pathological changes from the wild original 

 forms that alone a e "healthy." 



In order to make this strange assertion of Virchow intelligible, it 

 must be remembered that for more than thirty years he has regarded 

 it as his especial duty as a scientist to oppose the Darwinian theory and 



