52 
IV. JULY, 1913— JANUARY. 1914 
the parietal bones. The owner was ill for many months, 
and his wife also, both suffering tortures from sleepless- 
ness. Several times, however, the man heard in a 
dream a voice which revealed to him that they could 
only get well if they took the family fetish he had 
inherited to Mr. Haug, the missionary in N’Gomo, and 
followed Mr. Haug’s orders. Mr. Haug referred him 
to me, and made me a present of the fetish. The man 
and his wife stayed with me several weeks for treat- 
ment, and were discharged with their health very much 
improved. 
The belief that magical power dwells in human 
skulls which have been obtained expressly for this 
purpose, must be a quite primitive one. I saw not 
long ago in a medical periodical the assertion that the 
supposed cases of trephining which have often been 
recognised during the excavation and examination of 
prehistoric graves were by no means attempts at 
treatment of tumours on the brain or similar growths, 
as had been assumed, but were simply operations for 
the securing of fetish objects. The author of the 
article is probably right.* 
Ns 
Ns N« 
In the hrst nine months of my work here I have had 
close on two thousand patients to examine, and I can 
affirm that most European diseases are represented 
here ; I even had a child with whooping-cough. 
In Keith’s “ Antiquity of Man ” (Williams and Norgate, 1915), 
p. 21, is a picture of a prehistoric skull in which there is a hole made 
by trephining, as is shown by the fact that the edges are bevelled 
off. The condition of the bone shows further that the wound had 
healed prior to death. 
