Dr. Reeve's Account of Cretinism. 11 7 
Appearances nearly similar were observed by Malacarni and 
by Fodere. 
In the anatomical museum at Vienna, I saw a cretin’s skull, 
from which Professor Prochaska was so obliging as to per- 
mit me to have two drawings taken. It is the cranium of a 
cretin, who died at the age of thirty, yet the fontanelle is not 
closed, the second set of teeth are not out of their sockets, 
and none of the bones are distinctly and completely formed. 
The head is very large, the face small ; it is like the skull of 
an adult joined to the face of a child; every part bears marks 
of irregularity in the growth and formation; and irregular 
action must have been the concomitant of such a morbid 
structure, whether the appearances be considered as cause or 
effect. 
The four angles of the os malse are not well defined ; the 
zygomatic and maxillary processes of this bone are wanting ; 
the nasal processes of the superior maxillary bone are very 
large, and exhibit no marks of union with the os malae; the 
ossa nasi are very small ; the temporal bone is imperfectly 
formed ; the zygomatic process terminates at the coronoid 
process of the lower jaw; the mastoid and styloid processes 
are wanting, and the pars petrosa remarkably small ; the 
squamous portion not distinctly marked ; the os occipitis un- 
usually large, and numerous additional bones, ossa triquetra, 
along the whole course of the lambdoid suture. These ap- 
pearances will be readily seen by referring to the figures ; the 
other deviations of the natural structure corresponded with 
those already described by different writers. 
There is no fact in the natural history of man, that affords 
an argument so direct and so impressive, in proof of the in- 
