FIG. 16.
FIG. 17.
Morton and Catlin claim that while the artificial distortions of the cranium may play a part in developing synostosis these have no effect upon the intellectual functions. It has been stated further that there are no mental data to show the effect of artificial malformation of the child’s head during development. Frederick Peterson expresses the opinion that this practice only exists among the lower races of mankind. In this he is in decided error, since, as Barnard Davis pointed out many years ago, the practice is far more widespread than is usually suspected. It was common all over Europe, was practised by the Turanians, by the Slaves, by the Scandinavians, Anglo-Saxons, and Celts. Less than half a century ago Foville[192] proved that the nurses in Normandy were still giving children’s heads a sugar-loaf shape by bandages and a tight cap. In Britanny they preferred to press it round. In those districts Foville found that not only congenital cranial irregularities of all types, but epilepsy, idiocy, and insanity were exceedingly frequent. As customs like these survive in folklore long after the original superstition which gave them birth, it is exceedingly probable that such crop out in descendants of these races to the present day, to confront the anthropologist with some remarkable crania. Tylor[193] is of opinion that without respecting the repressive action of the Government, the Bretons and Normans secretly continue this practice. Despite the labours of Foville these people openly defied the Government for ten years.
Certain conditions of the occiput have been described as associated with degeneracy. As Obici[194] and Dei Vecchio[195] have shown, the occipital condyle, in man normally convex, abnormally varies between two extremes, the flat and angular condyles. The flat condyle indicates a degenerative type. In the angular condyle the anterior face is derived from that portion of the basi-occipital nucleus that normally takes part in the formation of the anterior condyle region; the posterior face forms the embryonal germ of the occipital.
The occipital of the adult is the final outcome of the fusion of an uncertain number of vertebræ. The occipital bone in man is practically made up of five bones, union between which does not occur completely until the fifth or sixth year. The deficiencies in the chondrocranium appear in the occipital bone, which requires a small portion of the dermal bone to complete it on each side.
The variability of the occipital bone which, as just shown, is so frequently associated with all forms of degeneracy, is still better understood when we remember that it is of vertebral character. The investing mass of the head and of the notochord is the skeleton of the occipital bone. Between this skeleton and the pituitary body the important portion of the brain formed by the occipital lobes takes its origin. As these lobes are practically, as Spitzka has shown, the great centres of sense and other inter-associations it is not astonishing that their imperfect development should be accompanied by changes in the occipital bone. As Crochley Clapham, Mickle, and Spitzka have shown, a flat occiput is common in imbecility and moral insanity. It has been found quite frequently in “reasoning maniacs” by Campagne. The proper development of the occiput influences the proper development of association tracts which serve as a balance wheel to the individual. The proper development of the occipital bone is, moreover, connected with the proper development of the two last vertebræ, which like it are losing their vertebral characteristics.