Strange Survivals: Some Chapters in the History of Man

by S. Baring-Gould

The first example of pre-historic trepanning was discovered in 1685. Montfaucon mentions it, but misunderstood it; he supposed that the man with the hole in his head had been wounded in battle, but had recovered. A second example was observed in 1816, and was also misinterpreted. A sepulchral cave had been opened at Nogent-les-Vierges, which contained two hundred skeletons. One of the skulls was found to be trepanned, and the edges of the wound showed evidence of the efforts of Nature to repair the injury. This also was supposed to be a case of wound in battle.

Fig. 51.—TREPANNED SKULL FROM NOGENT-LES-VIERGES (after Cartailhac, La France Préhistorique).

It must, however, be observed that the men thus trepanned lived in the stone age, and that no stone axe or sword could possibly gash away a slice of skull; that, moreover, the edges of the holes show that they have been laboriously worked through at an incline, the scraper held so as to make the hole convex, widest at the outer surface, and narrowing at the inner surface near the brain.

The hole in the head of the man from the Cave of l’Homme-Mort is peculiarly interesting, as it showed that he had been trepanned during life, and that Nature had done her best to smoothe the rough edges. Then, after death, a flint saw had been used, to further enlarge the hole. The marks of the two operations are quite distinct.

Now what, it may be asked, is the meaning of these holes cut in the head? Various suggestions have been offered, but the most plausible is this—that they were made in cases of epilepsy.

“The art of trepanning,” says Dr. Broca, “was employed exclusively in cases of spontaneous maladies. In all likelihood the operation took place in accordance with certain ideas prevalent relative to nervous complaints, such as epilepsy, idiotcy, convulsions, mental alienations, etc. These affections, which science regards as natural, always struck the imagination of the vulgar, and were attributed to divine or demoniacal possession. Who can say whether trepanning for epilepsy—a practice now almost abandoned, but which was formerly in usage, was not adopted as a means of opening a door by which the demons possessing the patient might be allowed to escape?”[48]

We know how that even in medieval times, the evil spirit exorcised out of a man is represented as a little figure issuing from his mouth. The primitive medicine-men, supposing that the epileptic child was possessed by a spirit, cut a hole in the head, and through this hole conjured the spirit forth. Then the portion of the skull cut away obtained a superstitious value, it had been in contact with a spirit, and so was employed as an amulet. It is, however, quite possible that these discs from the heads were worn by the wives or the mothers of those from whom they were cut, out of sentiment. In some tombs, male skulls have been found stuffed with small bones of children, and not all from the same children; these skulls had been polished by friction, and seem to have been worn hung round the neck, and to have served as a sort of reticule or rather reliquary, in which the widow carried portions of the various children she had borne, who had died, packed away in their father’s skull.

So much, then, for perforations in tombstones, interrupted continuity in circles, and trepanned skulls. All have the same interpretation, the opening of a means of egress for the spirit, and are precisely what the open window means now in a case of death, they are to the dead man what the door is in the house to the living man.

There is another usage of a hole that has come down to us from primeval man in a very modified form. I refer to the wedding-ring, a piece of perforated metal through which the finger is thrust. The marriage ring is a pledge of fidelity, but it must often have struck English people that it is a very one-sided arrangement when the woman has to wear the badge of being married, whereas the man wears none. The reason why the man wears no ring is probably to be sought in custom followed from the period when a man had as many wives as he liked, but the woman was debarred from belonging to more than one man.