the fantastic variety of their supposed improvements upon nature. While
the natural whiteness of the surface of these organs is always admired
by us, and by most people, the Malays take the greatest pains to stain
their teeth black, which they consider greatly adds to their beauty.
White teeth are looked upon with perfect disgust by the Dayaks of the
neighbourhood of Sarawak. In addition to staining the teeth, filing the
surface in some way or other is almost always resorted to. The nearly
universal custom in Java is to remove the enamel from the front surface
of the incisors, and often the canine teeth, hollowing out the surface,
sometimes so deeply as to penetrate the pulp cavity (Fig. 18, 4). The
cutting edges are also worn down to a level line with pumice-stone.
Another and less common, though more elaborate fashion, is to point the
teeth, and file out notches from the anterior surface of each side of
the upper part of the crown, so as to leave a lozenge-shaped piece of
enamel untouched; as this receives the black stain less strongly than
the parts from which the surface is removed, an ornamental pattern is
produced (5). In Borneo a still more elaborate process is adopted, the
front surface of each of the teeth is drilled near its centre with a
small round hole, and into this a plug of brass with a round or
star-shaped knob is fixed (6). This is always kept bright and polished
by the action of the lip over it, and is supposed to give a highly
attractive appearance when the teeth are displayed. A skull with the
teeth treated in this way may be seen in the Barnard Davis Collection,
now in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.
The Javan practice appears also to prevail in fashionable circles in the
neighbouring parts of the mainland of Asia. The Siamese envoy who
visited this country in 1880 had his upper incisor teeth treated like
No. 4, Fig. 18, and one of his suite had them pointed.
Perhaps the strange custom, so frequently adopted by the natives of
Australia, and of many islands of the Pacific, of knocking out one or
more of the front teeth might be mentioned here, but it is usually
associated with some other idea than ornament or even mere fashion. In
the first-named country it constitutes part of the rites by which the
youth are initiated into manhood, and in the Sandwich Islands it is
performed as a propitiatory sacrifice to the spirits of the dead.
The projection forwards of the front upper teeth, which we think
unbecoming, is admired by some races, and among the negro women of
Senegal it is increased by artificial means employed in childhood.[68]
All these modifications of form of comparatively external and flexible
parts are, however, trivial in their effects upon the body to those to
be spoken of next, which induce permanent structural alterations both
upon the bony framework and upon the important organs within.
Whatever might be the case with regard to the hair, the ears, the nose,
and lips, or even the teeth, it might have been thought that the actual
shape of the head, as determined by the solid skull, would not have been
considered a subject to be modified according to the fashion of the time
and place. Such, however, is far from being the case. The custom of
artificially changing the form of the head is one of the most ancient
and widespread with which we are acquainted. It is far from being
confined, as many suppose, to an obscure tribe of Indians on the
north-west coast of America, but is found under various modifications at
widely different parts of the earth’s surface, and among people who can
have had no intercourse with one another. It appears, in fact, to have
originated independently in many quarters, from some natural impulse
common to the human race. When it once became an established custom in
any tribe, it was almost inevitable that it should continue, until put
an end to by the destruction either of the tribe itself, or of its
peculiar institutions, through the intervention of some superior force;
for a standard of excellence in form, which could not be changed in
those who possessed it, was naturally followed by all who did not wish
their children to run the risk of the social degradation which would
follow the neglect of such a custom. “Failure properly to mould the
cranium of her offspring gives to the Chinook[69] matron the reputation
of a lazy and undutiful mother, and subjects the neglected children to
the ridicule of their young companions, so despotic is fashion.”[70] A
traveller, who mentions that he occasionally saw Chinooks with heads of
the ordinary shape, sickness or some other cause having prevented the
usual distortion in infancy, adds that such individuals could never
attain to any influence or rise to any dignity in their tribe, and were
not unfrequently sold as slaves.[71]
It is related in the narrative of Commodore Wilkes’ United States
Exploring Expedition,[72] that “at Niculuita Mr. Drayton obtained the
drawing of a child’s head, of the Wallawalla tribe (Fig. 19), that had
just been released from its bandages, in order to secure its flattened
shape. Both the parents showed great delight at the success they had met
with in effecting this distortion.”
Endeavours have been made to trace the origin of this and many analogous
customs to a desire to intensify or exaggerate any prevailing natural
peculiarity of conformation. Thus races in which the forehead is
naturally low are supposed to have admired, and then to have
artificially imitated, those individuals in which the peculiarity was
most pronounced. But this assumption does not rest upon any strong basis
of fact. The motives assigned by the native Peruvians for their
interference with the natural form of their children’s heads, as
reported by the early Spanish historians, were very various. Some said
that it contributed to health, and enabled them to bear greater burdens;
others that it increased the ferocity of the countenance in war.[73]
These were all probably excuses for a blind adherence to custom or the
imperious demands of fashion.
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--Flat-headed Indian child.]
Many of the less severe alterations of the form to which the head is
subjected are undesigned, resulting only from the mode in which the
child is carried or dressed during infancy. Thus habitually carrying the
child on one arm appears to produce an obliquity in the form of the
skull which is retained to a greater or less degree all through life.
The practice followed by nomadic people of carrying their infants
fastened to stiff pillows or boards commonly causes a flattening of the
occiput; and the custom of dressing the child’s head with
tightly-fitting bandages, still common in many parts of the Continent,
and even used in England within the memory of living people, produces an
elongated and laterally constricted form.[74] In France this is well
known, and so common is it in the neighbourhood of Toulouse, that a
special form of head produced in this manner is known as the
“_déformation Toulousaine_.”
Of the ancient notices of the custom of purposely altering the form of
the head, the most explicit is that of _Hippocrates_, who in his
treatise _De Aëris, Aquis et Locis_, written about 400 B.C., says,[75]
speaking of the people near the boundary of Europe and Asia, near the
_Palus Mæotis_ (Sea of Azoff): “I will pass over the smaller differences
among the nations, but will now treat of such as are great either from
nature or custom; and first, concerning the _Macrocephali_. There is no
other race of men which have heads in the least resembling theirs. At
first, usage was the principal cause of the length of their head, but
now nature co-operates with usage. They think those the most noble who
have the longest heads. It is thus with regard to the usage: immediately
after the child is born, and while its head is still tender, they
fashion it with their hands, and constrain it to assume a lengthened
shape by applying bandages and other suitable contrivances, whereby the
spherical form of the head is destroyed, and it is made to increase in
length. Thus, at first, usage operated, so that this constitution was
the result of force; but in the course of time it was formed naturally,
so that usage had nothing to do with it.”
Here, Hippocrates appears to have satisfied himself upon a point which
is still discussed with great interest, and still not cleared up--the
possibility of transmission by inheritance of artificially-produced
deformity. Some facts seem to show that such an occurrence may take
place occasionally, but there is an immense body of evidence against its
being habitual.
Herodotus also alludes to the same custom as do, at later dates, Strabo,
Pliny, Pomponius Mela, and others, though assigning different localities
to the nations or tribes to which they refer, and also indicating
variations of form in their peculiar cranial characteristics.
Recent archæological discoveries fully bear out these statements. Heads
deformed in various fashions, but chiefly of the constricted, elongated
shape, have been found in great numbers in ancient tombs, in the very
region indicated by Herodotus. They have been found near Tiflis, where
as many as 150 were discovered at one time, and at other places in the
Caucasus, generally in rock tombs; also in the Crimea, and at different
localities along the course of the Danube; in Hungary, Silesia, in the
south of Germany, Switzerland, and even in France and Belgium. The
people who have left such undoubted evidence of the practice of
deforming their heads have been supposed by various authors to have been
Avars, Huns, Tartars, or other Mongolian invaders of Europe; but later
French authors who have discussed this subject are inclined to assign
them to an Aryan race, who, under the name of Cimmerians, spread
westward over the part of Europe in which their remains are now found,
in the seventh or eighth century before our era. Whether the French
habit, scarcely yet extinct, of tightly bandaging the heads of infants,
is derived from these people, or is of independent origin, it is
impossible to say.
There is no unequivocal proof that the custom of designedly altering the
form of the head ever existed in this country, but the singular shape of
a skull found in 1853 in a Saxon grave at West Harnham, in Wilts,
figured and described in Davis’s and Thurnam’s _Crania Britannica_, and
now in the museum of the College of Surgeons, is apparently due to such
a cause.
In Africa and Australia no analogous customs have been shown to exist,
but in many parts of Asia and Polynesia, deformations, though usually
only confined to flattening of the occiput, are common. Though often
undesigned, they are done purposely, I am informed by Mr. H. B. Low, by
the Dayaks, in the neighbourhood of Sarawak. Sometimes, in the islands
of the Pacific, the head of the new-born infant is merely pressed by the
hands into the desired form, in which case it generally soon recovers
that which nature intended for it. In one island alone, Mallicollo, in
the New Hebrides, the practice of permanently depressing the forehead is
almost universal, and skulls are even found constricted and elongated
exactly after the manner of the Aymaras of ancient Peru. The
extraordinary flatness of the forehead, by which the inhabitants of this
island differ from those of all around, was noticed by Captain Cook and
the two Forsters, who accompanied him as naturalists, but they were not
able to ascertain whether it was a natural conformation or due to art.
It is only within the last few years that crania have been sent to
England which abundantly confirm the old description of the great
navigator, and also prove the artificial character of the deformity.
[Illustration: A B C
FIG. 20.--Skulls artificially deformed according to similar
fashions. A, from an ancient tomb at Tiflis; B, from Titicaca,
Peru. C, from the island of Mallicollo, New Hebrides. (From
specimens in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.)
]
Though the Chinese usually allow the head to assume its natural form,
confining their attentions to the feet, a certain class of mendicant
devotees appear to have succeeded to a remarkable extent in getting
their skulls elongated into a conical form, if the figure in Picart’s
_Histoire des Religions_, vol. iv. plate 131, is to be trusted.
America is, however, or rather has been, the headquarters of all these
fantastic practices, and especially along the western coast, and mainly
in two regions, near the mouth of the Columbia River in the north and in
Peru in the south. The practice also existed among the Indians of the
southern parts of what are now the United States, and among the Caribs
of the West India Islands. In ancient Peru, before the time of the
Spanish conquest, it was almost universal. In an edict of the
ecclesiastical authorities of Lima, issued in 1585, three distinct
forms of deformation are mentioned. Notwithstanding the severe penalties
imposed by this edict upon parents persisting in the practice, the
custom was so difficult to eradicate that another injunction against it
was published by the Government as late as 1752.
[Illustration:
FIG. 21.--Deformed skull of an infant who had died during the
process of flattening; from the Columbia River. (Mus. Roy. Coll.
Surgeons.)
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 22.--Artificially flattened skull of ancient Peruvian. (Mus.
Roy. Coll. Surgeons.)
]
In the West Indies, and the greater part of North America, the custom
has become extinct with the people who used it; but the Chinook Indians,
of the neighbourhood of the Columbia River, and the natives of Vancouver
Island, continue it to the present day; and this is the last stronghold
of this strange fashion, though under the influence of European example
and discouragement it is rapidly dying out. Here the various methods of
deforming the head, and their effects, have been studied and described
by numerous travellers. The process commences immediately after the
birth of the child, and is continued for a period of from eight to
twelve months, by which time the head has permanently assumed the
required form, although during subsequent growth it may partly regain
its proper shape. “It might be supposed,” observes Mr. Kane, who had
large opportunities of watching the process, “that the operation would
be attended with great suffering; but I never heard the infants crying
or moaning, although I have seen their eyes seemingly starting out of
the sockets from the great pressure; but, on the contrary, when the
thongs were loosened and the pads removed I have noticed them cry until
they were replaced. From the apparent dulness of the children whilst
under the pressure, I should imagine that a state of torpor or
insensibility is induced, and that the return to consciousness
occasioned by its removal must be naturally followed by a sense of
pain.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 23.--Posterior view of cranium, deformed according to the
fashion of flattening, with compensatory lateral widening. (Mus.
Roy. Coll. Surgeons.)
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 24.--Posterior view of cranium deformed according to the
fashion of circular constriction and elongation. (Mus. Roy. Coll.
Surgeons.)
]
Nearly if not all the different fashions in cranial deformity, observed
in various parts of the world, are found associated within a very small
compass in British Columbia and Washington Territory, each small tribe
having often a particular method of its own. Many attempts have been
made to classify these various deformities; but as they mostly pass
insensibly into one another, and vary according as the intention has
been carried out with a greater or less degree of perseverance and
skill, it is not easy to do so. Besides the simple occipital and the
simple frontal compressions, all the others may be grouped into two
principal divisions. First (Figs. 21, 22, and 23), that in which the
skull is flattened between boards or pads made (among the Indians of the
Columbia River) of deer-skin stuffed with frayed cedar bark or moss,
applied to the forehead and back of the head; and as there is no lateral
pressure, it bulges out sideways, as seen in Fig. 23, to compensate for
the shortening in the opposite direction. This form is very often
unsymmetrical, as the flattening boards, applied to a nearly spherical
surface, naturally incline a little to one side or the other; and when
this once commences, unless great care is used, it must increase until
the very curious oblique flattening so common in these skulls is
produced. This is the ordinary form of deformity among the Chinook
Indians of the Columbia River, commonly called “Flat-heads.” It is also
most frequent among the Quichuas of Peru.
The methods by which this particular kind of deformity was produced
varied in detail in different tribes. One of the most effective is thus
described by Mr. Townsend: “The Wallamet Indians place the infant, soon
after birth, upon a board, to the edges of which are attached little
loops of hempen cord or leather; and other similar cords are passed
across and back, in a zigzag manner, through these loops, enclosing the
child and binding it firmly down. To the upper edge of this board, in
which is a depression to receive the back part of the head, another
smaller one is attached by hinges of leather, and made to lie obliquely
upon the forehead, the force of the pressure being regulated by several
strings attached to its edge, which are passed through holes in the
board upon which the infant is lying, and secured there.”
The second form of deformity (Figs. 20, 24, and 25) is produced by
constricting bandages of deer’s hide, or other similar material,
encircling the head behind the ears, usually passing below the occiput
behind, and across the forehead, and again across the vertex, behind the
coronal suture, producing a circular depression. The result is an
elongation of the head, but with no lateral bulging and with no
deviation from bilateral symmetry. This was the form adopted, with
trifling modifications, by the _Macrocephali_ of Herodotus, by the
Aymara Indians of Peru, and by certain tribes, as the Koskeemos, of
Vancouver Island. The “_déformation Toulousaine_” is a variation of the
same form. Another modification is thus described in Wilson’s
_Prehistoric Man_: “The Newatees, a warlike tribe on the north end of
Vancouver’s Island, give a conical shape to the head by means of a thong
of deer’s skin, padded with the inner bark of the cedar-tree frayed
until it assumes the consistency of very soft tow. This forms a cord
about the thickness of a man’s thumb, which is wound round the infant’s
head, compressing it gradually into a uniformly tapering cone. The
effect of this singular form of head is still further increased by the
fashion of gathering the hair into a knot on the crown of the head.” A
“sugar-loaf” form of skull has also been found in an ancient grave in
France, at Voiteur in the Department of Jura.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--Cranium of Koskeemo Indian, Vancouver Island,
deformed by circular constriction and elongation. (Mus. Roy. Coll.
Surgeons.)]
The brain, of course, has to accommodate itself to the altered shape of
the bony case which contains it; and the question naturally arises,
whether the important functions belonging to this organ are in any way
impaired or affected by its change of form. All observations upon the
living Indians who have been subjected to it concur in showing that if
any modification in mental power is produced, it must be of a very
inconsiderable kind, as no marked difference has been detected between
them and the people of neighbouring tribes which have not adopted the
fashion. Men whose heads have been deformed to an extraordinary extent,
as Concomly, a Chinook chief, whose skull is preserved in the museum at
Haslar Hospital, have often risen by their own abilities to considerable
local eminence; and the fact that the relative social position of the
chiefs, in whose families the heads are always deformed, and the slaves
on whom it is never permitted, is constantly maintained, proves that the
former evince no decided inferiority in intelligence or energy.
Of the Newatees, mentioned above, Wilson says, “The process seems
neither to affect the intellect nor the courage of the people, who are
remarkable for cunning, as well as fierce daring, and are the terror of
surrounding tribes.”
Of the Mallicollese it is expressly stated by George Forster that “they
are the most intelligent people we have ever met with in the South Seas;
they understood our signs and gestures as if they had been long
acquainted with them, and in a few minutes taught us a great number of
words.... Thus what they wanted in personal attraction they made up in
acuteness of understanding.” Cook gives some remarkable instances of the
honesty of the “ape-like nation,” as he calls them.
Although the American Indians,--living a healthy life in their native
wilds, and under physical conditions which cause all bodily injuries to
occasion far less constitutional or local disturbance than is the case
with people living under the artificial conditions and the accumulated
predisposition to disease which civilisation entails,--thus appear to
suffer little, if at all, from this unnatural treatment, it seems to be
otherwise with the French, on whom its effects have been watched by
medical observers more closely than it can have been on the savages in
America. “Dr. Foville proves, by positive and numerous facts, that the
most constant and the most frequent effects of this deformation, though
only carried to a small degree, are headaches, deafnesses, cerebral
congestions, meningitis, cerebritis, and epilepsy; that idiocy or
madness often terminates this series of evils; and that the asylums for
lunatics and imbeciles receive a large number of their inmates from
among these unhappy people.”[76] For this reason the French physicians
have exerted all their influence, and with great success, to introduce a
more rational system in the districts where the practice of compressing
the heads of infants prevailed.”[77]
We may now pass from the head to the extremities, but there will be
little to say about the hands, for the artificial deformities practised
upon those members are confined to chopping off one or more of the
fingers, generally of the left hand, and usually not so much in
obedience merely to fashion, as part of an initiatory ceremony, or an
expiation or oblation to some superior, or to some departed person. Such
practices are common among the American Indians, some tribes of
Africans, the Australians, and Polynesians, especially those greatest of
all slaves of ceremonial, the Fijians, where the amputation of fingers
is demanded to appease an angry chieftain, or voluntarily performed as a
token of affection on the occasion of the death of a relative.
But _per contra_, the feet have suffered more, and altogether with more
serious results to general health and comfort, from simple conformity to
pernicious customs, than any other part of the body. And on this
subject, instead of relating the unaccountable caprices of the savage,
we have to speak only of people who have already advanced to a tolerably
high grade of civilisation, and to include all those who are at the
present time foremost in the ranks of intellectual culture.
The most extreme instance of modification of the size and
[Illustration:
FIG. 26.--Section of natural foot with the bones, and a
corresponding section of a Chinese deformed foot. The outline of
the latter is dotted, and the bones shaded.
]