THEORY
OF
THE FRONTAL SINUS.
BY E. MILLIGAN, M.D., F.S.A.
IT is not easy to say at what date or period of
science, the eminences and various inequalities on
the surface of the human skull first became particular
objects of attention among medical men. They
could not have escaped notice after the operation of
trepan, or perforation of the cranium, when its fracture,
or other diseases occasioning compression of
the brain, had once been introduced; for, in that
operation, such inequalities greatly increase its
hazard, and call for the strictest attention from the
most reckless practitioners. But the trepan, and
these inequalities, were familiar to Hippocrates and
to Aristotle, who wrote not very long after him, and
beyond this period the history of medicine is obscured
with fable. In the time of Celsus the attention to
these inequalities of the cranial surface had not
diminished. He warns us earnestly to attend to
them, while delivering his minute precepts for the
management of the trepan; he suggests that the
prominence of the mastoid process is probably the
reason why no hair grows on the scalp immediately
behind the ears; and informs us expressly that the
