FIG. 50.—Foot of Chinese woman
artificially deformed.
(After photograph.
Side by side with colouring must be placed tattooing, which leaves more indelible marks. There exists an infinite number of varieties of it, which, however, may be reduced to two principal categories: tattooing by incision, in which the design is produced by a series of scars or gashes, and tattooing by puncture, in which the design is formed by the introduction under the skin of a black powder by means of a needle. The first method is practised by dark-skinned peoples, Negroes, Melanesians, Australians (Figs. [14], [15], [149], and [150]). In this case the incision having injured the non-pigmented dermic layer the scars are less coloured than the surrounding skin. Tattooing by puncture is only possible among clear-skinned peoples; among the latter may be instanced the New Zealanders, the Dyaks, and the Laotians, called “green-bellies.” In the case of a great number of peoples, tattooing is restricted to one sex only, chiefly to women (Ainus, Fig. [49], Chukchi), or else to certain categories of persons (postilions and drawers of carriages in Japan; sailors, criminals, and prostitutes in Europe).
FIG. 51.—Skeleton of the foot
represented in Fig. [50],
with outline of shoe.
Tattooing may be already considered as an ethnic mutilation; but there exist many others of a less anodyne character which are also connected with ornamentation. Chinese women deform their feet by means of tight bandages, and end by transforming them into horrible stumps (Figs. [50] and [51]), which only allow them to walk by holding on to surrounding objects. European and other “civilised” women compress themselves in corsets to such an extent that they bring on digestive troubles, and even displacement of the kidneys.[204] The Australians draw out the teeth of young men on their reaching the age of puberty; Negroes of the western coast of Africa break the teeth and transform them into little points; the Malays file them into the form of a half-circle, a saw, etc. As to cranial deformations, a whole chapter would not suffice to describe them all. Topinard distinguishes four principal types of such, without counting the various special forms (trilobate skull of the islanders of Sacrificios, etc.). In general the skulls are lengthened by this practice into a sort of sugar-loaf, the top of which points more or less upward and backward. It is chiefly by compression, by means of bandages, boards, or various caps and head-dresses, that the desired form of the head is obtained.[205]
Intentional deformation is practised by the Chinooks and other Indian tribes of the Pacific slope of the United States; by the Aymaras of Bolivia; in the New Hebrides; among a great number of tribes of Asia Minor, where the deformed skulls recall those which Herodotus had described under the name of macrocephali. In Europe the custom of altering the shape of the head has spread a little everywhere; the best known deformation is that which Broca had described under the name of “Toulousaine,” and which is still practised both in the north and south of France (Fig. [52]). What effect may deformation of the head have on intellectual development? Inquiries made in this direction afford no positive information; but it may be presumed that without being as harmful as some people believe, the deformation, by displacing the convolutions of the brain, may favour the outbreak of cerebral diseases in persons predisposed to them.[206]