Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and Results

by Eugene S. Talbot

FIG. 13.

FIG. 14.

IV. Brachycephaly (shortness of head. Fig. [14]). The pure type like pure dolichocephaly is not necessarily by itself evidence of degeneracy, as it may represent race. It is, however, a disappearing type of skull, and hence should lead to critical examination. In the case of the philosopher Kant his ultra-brachycephaly could not be charged to race, since he sprang from dolichocephalic Scotch on one side and dolichocephalic Germans on the other. (a) Posterior stenosis. (1) Pachycephaly (thickness of head) is due to synostosis of the parietal bone with the occipital. (2) Oxycephaly (sugar-loaf head) is due to synostosis of the parietal bones and the occipital with compensatory growth of the region of the anterior fontanelle; a variety of this is acrocephaly (spire head). (b) Upper, anterior, and lateral synostosis. (1) Platycephaly (flat head. Fig. [15]), or chæmacephaly, is due to extensive synostosis of the temporal bones with the parietal. Kant, in addition to his cranial stigmata, had this condition. (2) Trochocephaly (roundness of head) is due to partial synostosis of the frontals and parietals in the centre of the coronal suture. (3) Plagiocephaly (wry head. Fig. [16]) is due to unilateral synostosis of the frontal and parietal bones. (c) Brachycephaly due to inferior medium synostosis. Simple brachycephaly is due to early synostosis of the nasal and sphenoid.

FIG. 15.

To these should be added kyphocephaly (lump head), due to synostosis of the posterior part of the squamous portion of the temporal and the parietal bones with Wormian bones in the lambdoid fissure. Tapeisocephaly (low head) is due to synostosis of the great wings of the sphenoid with the frontal. Scaphocephaly (boat-shaped head. Fig. [17]) was a term applied by Von Baer to skulls which are very narrow and compressed at the sides, and in which there is no trace of the sagittal suture, but its region is so elevated that the skull cap has the form of a keel boat bottom upward. Trigonocephaly (triangular head) is a variety of scaphocephaly in which depression occurs in place of the keel. Sir Walter Scott had a skull in which premature closure of the sagittal suture produced the appearance of scaphocephaly, but compensation for this elsewhere produced a decidedly different type. Scott presented neurotic phenomena during youth, albeit the brain disease from which he died had anything but a degenerate origin.