In one of his classic lectures delivered during the winter semester 1862-1863 at the University of Berlin, Virchow1 directed special attention to the hyperostoses affecting the facial and cranial bones. He dwelt at length on this localization of bone hypertrophy because it served him well in the discussion of the general subject of periostosis and hyperostosis. For, as he pointed out, these processes when affecting the skull are often of unusual severity and lead to such striking facial and cranial deformities that even in his time there had accumulated a number of famous skulls of unusual size, shape and thickness from which the gross pathology, at least, might be studied. Occasionally, too, an illuminating clinical history accompanied the record.
In this connection Virchow related graphically the case of Forcade.
Unhappily it was this surgeon's son who was the patient. With the exception of an attack of smallpox the boy