Jacques Bertillon

“ A person who had been trepanned comes to die—one or more pieces are cut from his sacred cranium for amulets or relics; but, inasmuch as the man could not live in another world with a mutilated skull, another piece of skull is given him to make him whole, when he reaches the abode of the blest.—La Nature. ”

“ The skull in the figure has undergone three mutilations, D, E, and F, doubtless for the purpose of making amulets. Nor ought we to deride this superstition which attaches supernatural virtue to a bone from the human head: as late as the last century, a powder made from certain bones of the cranium used to be prescribed as a cure for epilepsy. It has been remarked that all the skulls in which disks of bone were found, were pierced during the life of the individual. ”

“ Up to that time they had supposed that they resulted from strokes of a hatchet dealt by an athletic arm, just as now a sabre often removes a portion of the skull. But what strength are we to imagine the men of that time to have possessed in order to make such terrible wounds with a simple stone hatchet? ”

“ Upon these grounds we may safely argue the existence of a system of religion. It has been observed that all the operations of trepanning were performed either upon infants or upon youths. Why were not all ages subject to it? why only infants or youths? ”

“ And yet it is known that, among the negroes of Western Africa, certain individuals, to secure initiation in sainthood, and to prove the virtue of their amulets or gree-grees, open their bellies with their own hands, pull their bowels out, put them back, and sew themselves up. ”

“ Therefore, when one suffers in the head, we must open a passage to let the demon out. It was thus that Jupiter, suffering from headache, escaped the malady by causing Vulcan to strike him so violently that Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, sprang from the opening. ”

“ These rude sculptures, ever repeated exactly, which represent a female divinity upon the walls of the grottoes of Baye, even prove that the religion of Neolithic times had risen to the height of anthropomorphism. Now, a clearly-defined deity, a god in human form, must have priests that are regularly initiated ”