Hippocrates and Strabonius both speak of head-binding as a custom
inducing artificial microcephaly, and some tribes of North
American Indians still retain this custom.
As a rule, microcephaly is attended with associate idiocy and
arrested development of the rest of the body. Ossification of the
fontanelles in a mature infant would necessarily prevent full
development of the brain. Osiander and others have noticed this
anomaly. There are cases on record in which the fontanelles have
remained open until adulthood.
Augmentation of the volume of the head is called macrocephaly,
and there are a number of curious examples related. Benvenuti
describes an individual, otherwise well formed, whose head began
to enlarge at seven. At twenty-seven it measured over 37 inches
in circumference and the man's face was 15 inches in height; no
other portion of his body increased abnormally; his voice was
normal and he was very intelligent. He died of apoplexy at the
age of thirty.
Fournier speaks of a cranium in the cabinet of the Natural
History Museum of Marseilles of a man by the name of Borghini,
who died in 1616. At the time he was described he was fifty years
old, four feet in height; his head measured three feet in
circumference and one foot in height.
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