Human skull

“ A human skull, with the brain scooped out, but the red scalp, and part of the hair, and the flesh of the face adhering to it, while the lower jaw had been torn away, was hung round this horrible-looking image's neck. ”

“ I saw at the same time a row of human skulls, from the lowest skull that has been found, the Neanderthal skull—skulls from Central Africa, skulls from the Bushmen of Australia—skulls from the farthest isles of the Pacific sea—up to the best skulls of the last generation;—and I noticed that there was the same difference between those skulls that there was between the products of those skulls, and I said to myself, "After all, it is a simple question of intellectual development." ”

“ Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull.
"Upon this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved; for the phrase, 'main branch, seventh limb, east side,' could refer only to the position of the skull upon the tree, while 'shoot from the left eye of the death's-head' admitted, also, of but one interpretation, in regard to a search for buried treasure. ”

“ A great deal of the endless variety in the form of the skull of different mammals depends upon the differing proportions of cranium and face. In the human skull, for example, the cranium is enormously developed and forms a great dome, while the face is shortened almost to the limit of possibility; the skull of the Horse, on the other hand, goes to nearly the opposite extreme of elongation of the facial and shortening of the cranial region. The posterior surface of the skull, or occiput, is made up of four bones, which in most adult mammals are fused into a single occipital bone. ”

“ In the savage African and Australian the jaw is prolonged forward, constituting what he calls, by an expressive term, prognathous. In the nomadic Mongolian the skull is pyramidal and the face broad. In Civilized Man the skull is oval or elliptical. But the naturalist records that there are forms of transition, as nations approach to civilization or relapse into barbarism.
Thus does the Human Skull refuse any definitive answer. There are varieties of skull, as of color; but the question remains, to what extent they attest original diversity. ”

“ Other skulls, such as that of a Negro copied in Fig. 28 from Mr. Busk's 'Crania typica,' have a very different, greatly elongated form, and may be termed 'oblong.' In this skull the extreme length is to the extreme breadth as 100 to not more than 67, and the transverse diameter of the human skull may fall below even this proportion. ”

“ These skulls mostly come from Ireland, where they frequently let the bodies of criminals hang on the gibbet till they fall to pieces.” The human skulls were sold at 8s., 9s., 10s., and 11s. each. They were given in the form of powder, or one of the preparations, such as the oil or tincture. Besides the skull, other human bones, calcined and powdered were used. An oil and a tincture of skulls, an extract of the gall and the heart of man made with rectified spirit, was dropped into the ear as a remedy for deafness, and also given internally for epilepsy. ”

“ Flemming wrote that human skull was considered a potent remedy in all ailments for which practitioners would administer human brain,—that is, in nerve troubles and in epilepsy. Preferably, the skull should be taken from a corpse which had died a violent death,—“Quæ e cadavere violenta morte extincto est desumta.” ”

“ Beyond the loss of teeth, due evidently to old age, the skull is so nearly intact as to make possible the application of the usual craniometric procedure, thus leading to a more exact comparative study than has been possible, for example, in all previously discovered paleolithic human skulls dating from the same period, not excepting even Spy and Homo mousteriensis. ”

“ On removing the upper of these two stalagmitic floors a perfect human skull was discovered, along with broken bones of animals, charcoal, limpet shells, bone pins, an instrument of bone like a paper-knife, coarse pottery with fragments of chert imbedded in its mass, a portion of a jet armlet, as well as several boars’ tusks. ”

“ It must be noted that many of these features may be found also in recent human skulls of the inferior races, but that they are very rare, very scattered, very isolated, and occur only as aberrations. It is the accumulation of all these features in every skull of a whole series which constitutes an assemblage entirely new and of great importance. ”

“ Lately science has perfected the difficult process of reconstructing the faces of human beings of whom only the skull or a few bones, perhaps, are obtainable.
"To the unskilled observer a fleshless skull presents little human likeness and certainly conveys no notion of the exact appearance in life of the person to whom it belonged. But by an ingenious system of building up muscles and skin upon the bones of the skull this appearance can be reproduced with scientific accuracy. ”

“ In some skulls the brain case may be said to be 'round,' the extreme length not exceeding the extreme breadth by a greater proportion than 100 to 80, while the difference may be much less.* ( [Footnote] *In no normal human skull does the breadth of the brain-case exceed its length.) Men possessing such skulls were termed by Retzius 'brachycephalic,' and the skull of a Calmuck, of which a front and side view (reduced outline copies of which are given in Figure 26) are depicted by Von Baer in his excellent, "Crania selecta," affords a very admirable example of that kind of skull. ”

“ The next classification was that by the color of the eyes, as black, brown, hazel, gray, and blue. This subject had also attracted much attention of late, and, within certain limits, the results have proved very valuable. The most favorite classification, however, had always been that according to the skulls. The skull, as the shell of the brain, had by many students been supposed to betray something of the spiritual essence of man; and who could doubt that the general features of the skull, if taken in large averages, did correspond to the general features of human character? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of all the parts of the human frame, the skull is that upon which anthropologists have in the past expended the most of their time and thought. We have now, in Great Britain alone, at least four collections of skulls, each of which includes more than a thousand specimens, and in the other great national and university museums of Europe there are large collections available for study and comparison. ”

“ In evolution from the lowest fish to the highest mammal, and in the embryonic development of man, these become united.
The primary skull, as already stated, is practically an extension of the vertebræ, which send side outgrowths to cover the brain as the backbone covers the spinal cord. This primary skull extended in front of the notochord (the spinal cord of the human embryo, and the permanent spinal cord of the lancelet) , where it gave off two trabeculæ cranii or front [Pg 162] skull plates. Behind, the primary skull or chondrocranium gives off two occipal or rear skull plates. ”

“ The skull is large and solid, with no front teeth; the vertebræ extend to the very tip of the tail, but show no rudiments of posterior limbs; the fore limbs, on the contrary, are very highly developed, the bones exactly corresponding to those of the human arm, having even the five fingers, with every joint distinct, yet enclosed in a stiff inflexible skin, where not a joint can have any motion. ”

“ And yet, as we have seen, it is more in this respect than any other, that human skulls vary, towards and from, the brutal type—the brain case of an average dolichocephalic European differing far less from that of a Negro, for example, than his jaws do. In the absence of the jaws, then, any judgment on the relations of the fossil skulls to recent Races must be accepted with a certain reservation. ”

“ The walls are edged with skulls, skulls are heaped in dishes before the king, skulls are stuck on the tops of poles, skulls are used as the heads of banner staves, skulls are tied to dancers, and all the temples, or Ju-ju houses, are almost entirely built of human skulls. ”

“ Squire Headlong. (taking the skull.) Memento mori. Come, a bumper of Burgundy.
Mr Nightshade. A very classical application, Squire Headlong. The Romans were in the practice of adhibiting skulls at their banquets, and sometimes little skeletons of silver, as a silent admonition to the guests to enjoy life while it lasted.
The Reverend Doctor Gaster. Sound doctrine, Mr Nightshade.
Mr Escot. I question its soundness. The use of vinous spirit has a tremendous influence in the deterioration of the human race.
Mr Foster. ”

“ A skull here—a rib there—bones scattered about as the wild beasts left them after the horrible feast. The clean-picked skull grins and stares—every bone and scattered lock of hair has its story of a tragedy. ”

“ The skull is nearly oval in form, convex externally, the bone being much thicker at the base than elsewhere, and it is, in every respect admirably adapted to resist any injury to which it may be exposed, thus affording ample protection to the brain substance which it envelops. The internal surface of the cranium presents eminences and depressions for lodging the convolutions of the brain, and numerous furrows for the ramifications of the blood-vessels. ”

“ The mammalian skull in its primitive form may be thought of as a tube divided into two parts, of which the hinder one is the brain-chamber, or cranial cavity, and the forward one the nasal chamber or passage. With the growth of the brain and consequent enlargement of the cranium, this tubular character is lost; and various modifications of the teeth, jaws and facial region, the development of horns and tusks, bring about the many changes which the skull has undergone. ”

“ Now, those skulls which have the largest and strongest jaws and the widest zygomatic aperture, have the muscles so large that they meet on the crown of the skull, and deposit the bony ridge which supports them, and which is the highest in that which has the smallest cranial surface. ”

“ Scarcely in a single instance do the outer plates of the skull-bones correspond permanently with the inner ones, and therefore not with the brain. I call to your recollection only the skulls of certain animals, in which, between the two skull-plates, is to be found a large hollow, as we, indeed, also find in man ”

“ But the fact is that some skulls are only one-eighth of an inch thick and some are a full inch in thickness. And there is no certain way of telling just how thick a skull is, except by an examination of its interior and not every subject is willing to undergo this inconvenience. The phrenologist may thump it with his knuckle and sound it, but he can never be certain how near he is to the brain nor how much brains are within. And still again, nearly every skull has thin parts and thick parts, and in some heads there are actual cavities in places. ”

“ It occurs to some extent, though much less than in this old man, in American skeletons. His skull presents all the characters of advanced age, though the teeth had been worn down to the sockets without being lost; which, again, is the character of some, though not of all, aged Indian skulls. The skull proper, or brain-case, is very long—more so than in ordinary modern skulls—and this length is accompanied with a great breadth; so that the brain was of greater size than in [155] average modern men, and the frontal region was largely and well developed. ”

“ Most conservative of all has been the structure of the cranial region of the skull, that surrounding the brain, and in consequence it furnishes the most reliable characters for the discrimination of the larger groups, the subclasses or superorders. ”

“ The feminine skull appears to be marked by a smaller volume, greater delicacy in the contours of the orbits and the structure of the jaws, the absence or inferior importance of the frontal sinus, a more gradual passage from the forehead to the root of the nose, and a flattening of the parietal bone. ”