A tumulus in the Guisseny commune (Finistère), excavated about two years ago, covered over a sepulchral crypt. At the southeastern extremity was picked up a badly baked hand-made earthenware vase with four handles. Beside the vase lay a skull, on which could be made out traces of oxidation, which had probably been caused by the wearing of a metal band, which has not been found. This skull bears on the right side a little oval hole with cicatrized edges about an inch long by two fifths of an inch broad. The discovery of a bronze dagger and two bronze plaques leaves no doubt as to the age of this tumulus. This example of trepanation is the only well authenticated one of which I know in Brittany. It is true one skull has been mentioned as found beneath the megalithic monument of Saint-Picoux de Quiberon (Morbihan), which is even said to bear marks of sawing and scraping made in attempting trepanation, but this fact has been very much questioned, and the date at which the trepanation was performed, if performed it were, is very doubtful.[23] The proof we are seeking of the antiquity of the operation of trepanation is not therefore to be found here.
On a plain amongst the hills of the right bank of the Seine, above Paris, rises a mound resembling a promontory which is known as the Guérin mound, and consists of a vast deposit of chalk which was excavated long ago. Successive operations have brought to light eight caves, most of which contained a number of human remains, which were unfortunately dispersed without having been scientifically examined. One alone, opened in 1874, contained numerous bones belonging to individuals of every age and of both sexes, with polished flints, fragments of pottery, and implements of stag-horn. Amongst these relics was found the skull of an old man showing a very curious example of trepanation. It was unfortunately broken by the workmen in the very moment of discovery, and could only be very insufficiently examined. Other examples, however, which could be properly authenticated, are not wanting from the banks of the Seine and Marne; two fragments of skull were found in the canton of Moret, one of which had been trepanned during the life of its owner, and the other after death. We must also mention the crania presented to the learned societies at the Sorbonne, one of which came from the plateau of Avrigny, near Mousseaux-lès-Bray (Seine-et-Marne). Side by side with the skeleton lay polished hatchets, scrapers, and arrow-heads, fragments of pottery blackened by smoke, and lastly a solitary bone of an ox, pierced with three holes at regular distances, which had probably been used as a flute. Of nine crania found in this excavation three were pierced, two after death and one during life, the edges of the last named bearing very evident traces of treatment.
A trepanned skull was also discovered in a Neolithic sepulchre near Crécy-sur-Morin, where lay no less than thirty skeletons, remarkable for the strongly defined section of the tibiae, whilst around were strewn hatchets, flint knives, bones, stilettos and picks of siliceous limestone with handles made of pieces of stag-horn. The tomb, built of stones without mortar, contained two contiguous chambers separated by a wall, and covered over by a stone weighing more than 1,200 tons. It seems likely that this huge stone had not been moved—it must have been beyond the strength of the makers of the tomb to lift it,—but that the spaces beneath, in which the dead had been placed, had been merely hollowed out. In the covered Avenue des Mureaux, of which I have already spoken, were picked up several trepanned crania. The tools, scrapers, and piercers, which had probably been used for the operation, lay near the crania.
A Neolithic sepulchre containing three trepanned crania was opened at Dampont, near Dieppe. The operation had been as neatly executed as if it had been performed by one of our most distinguished surgeons. As at Crécy, the sepulchral crypt was divided into two chambers, and the slab between them was pierced with a square opening,[24]—a fresh example of the curious practice of making openings, of which we have spoken in treating of so many different regions, often apparently completely cut off from communication with each other.
Beneath the Bougon dolmen (Deux-Sèvres), in the west of France, was found a skull, and at Lizières in the same department, the skeleton of a tall old man with a dolichocephalic skull and platycnemic tibiæ bearing traces of old wounds badly healed. The bony tissue of the skull was in an unhealthy state and the trepanation had evidently been part of medical treatment. At Saint-Martin-la-Riviére (Vienna), a tomb dating from Neolithic times contained five trepanned crania, on one of which the perforation had been made by scraping. In this tomb was also found a round piece of skull with a hole in it, which had doubtless been used as a pendant. The other objects found in this sepulchre were of a remarkable character, and included hatchets made of coralline limestone, jade, fibrolite, and serpentine, the blades of flint knives, arrows, some feathered, others stalked, some necklace beads, and a number of vases, some apodal, others with flat stands, and nearly all without any attempt at ornamentation. Beneath a dolmen near St. Affrique, M. Cartailhac discovered a skull with two holes in it; one near the bregma, which had been made during life, and the other on a level with the lambda, which had not been made until after death.[25] We cannot now note the important conclusions founded on these two perforations, we must be content with adding here that the tomb contained four other skeletons with crania showing no trace of trepanation; the tibiae were platycnemic and the humeri had the so-called perforation of the olecranon farces, which certain anthropologists, as I think without sufficient reason, consider characteristic of inferior races. We must mention yet one more discovery which it will not do to omit. A human parietal with a piece missing that had evidently been taken out, was found beneath the rock-shelter of Entre-Roches near Angoulême. The skull bore very evident traces of the performance of an operation which may or may not have been executed during life. Was it done to remove the diseased bone—for it was diseased—in the hope of prolonging life? Did the patient die under the hands of the surgeon, or was the piece of bone taken out after death to be used as an ornament or an amulet? Any one of these hypotheses is possible, and all we can say for certain is that there is no sign of the wound having been healed in any way. This is a common thing enough, and the interest of the discovery arises from a different cause. The rock-shelter of Entre-Roches is supposed to date from Paleolithic times, and if it were certain that there has been no displacement of the soil on which the parietal was found, it is to be concluded that trepanation was practised in the Quaternary period when man was living amongst the large extinct pachydermata and felidæ. But it will be difficult to admit this unless other discoveries confirming it are made. If, however, we cannot prove that trepanation was practised in France in Palæolithic times, we can assert that it was continued down to the earliest centuries of the Christian era. One remarkable case of trepanation was found, for instance, in the Merovingian cemetery near St. Quentin; and a trepanned skull was recently exhibited at a meeting of the Anthropological Society in Paris, which had been found beneath a Merovingian tomb at Jeuilly. The patient had long survived his wound. The skeleton was found in a stone trough, narrower at the foot than at the head. The skeleton of a man between forty and fifty years of age was found in a Frank cemetery at Limet, near Liège. On the left parietal of the skull was an oval hole as big as a pigeon’s egg, bearing traces of having been medically treated. The patient, like the man of Jeuilly, certainly survived the operation. His tomb, as were the resting-places of his neighbors in death, was covered over with a huge unhewn stone, and beside him lay another skeleton. A few nails and bits of wood were the only things found in the tomb. We may also mention the skeleton of a Frank of between fifty-five and sixty-five years of age with a trepanned skull, found by M. Pilloy, in a cemetery of the St. Quentin arrondissement, which also contained numerous objects dating from the sixth century A.D.
So far we have only spoken of France, but similar facts are reported all over Europe, and the difficulty really is to make a selection. Some round pieces of skull, like those of Lozère, have been picked up in Umbria[26]; and a skull, bearing traces of an operation, the aim of which was to remove a portion of the left parietal, was found in the Casa da Mouva (Portugal), which dates, as do so many in France, from Neolithic times.
Goss mentions a discovery in one of the pile-dwellings of Lake Bienne, of a skull with a large hole in it with bevelled edges. There is no trace of this wound having healed, and the patient had evidently died soon after the operation.
The Prague Museum possesses two crania found at Bilin in Bohemia; one, of a pronounced dolichocephalic type, has near the middle of the right parietal an opening measuring one and a half by two and a third inches; the cicatrization is complete, and trepanation was evidently performed long before death. The other is mesaticephalic, and bears a round opening about one and a half inches in diameter. Dr. Wankel, to whom we owe these details, is well known through other discoveries; his excavations in the Bytchiskala Cave brought to light the skeleton of a young girl of ten or twelve years old, who bad undergone the operation of trepanation. The wound, which was on the right side of the forehead, was half healed. The child still wore the ornaments she had been fond of in life—bronze bracelets and a necklace of large glass beads.
Discoveries of a similar character succeeded each other in Bohemia, and in nearly every case the operation of trepanation had been performed on the upper part of the forehead. Not very long ago it was reported to the Anthropological Society of Berlin that in excavating two tombs containing the remains of burnt bodies at Trüpschutz, on the west of Brux, some fragments of skull were picked up, showing traces of trepanation. The edges of the wound in this case bad been healed, and the patient had lived on after the operation. Professor Virchow came to the same conclusion with regard to a skull from a Neolithic tomb which bore on the right parietal traces of an ancient cicatrized wound. He also tells us of the finding in Poland of a round piece of skull which had evidently been worn as an amulet.[27]
In the north of Europe similar discoveries have been made. At Borreby, in Denmark, a skull was found from which large pieces had been taken; and another from beneath a dolmen at Noes, in the island of Falster, had a hole in it no less than two and a quarter by one and three quarter inches in size. In the one case the holes were parts of a wound to which the victim had succumbed; in the other the edges were too regular to have been caused by traumatism. A Russian skull, a cast of which has recently been presented to the Italian Anthropological Society, bears traces of two trepanations; one performed during life, the other after death. The former had evidently been caused neither by illness nor by a wound.