CHAP. III. Of the Sutures.
* 1.1THe Sutures do sew or fasten together the Bones of the skull; these be five in number. Three, are true and legitimate; two, false and spurious. The Coronal, the first of the true Sutures, is seated in the forepart of the head, descending downwards overthwart the fore-part of the head to the midst of the temples; it is so called, because Corolla, that is, wreaths, crowns, or garlands, are set upon that place.
The second is called the Sagittalis, or right Suture, as that, which running through the Crown, divides the Head into two equal parts, as with a straight line, running the length of it from the Coronal to the Lambdoides or hind-Suture.
But this third Suture Lambdoides is so called, because it represents the Capital greek letter Lambda Λ. You must understand this description of the Sutures, not as always, but as for the greater part,* 1.2 to be thus. For there be some skulls that want the foremost Suture, othersome the hind, and sometimes such as have none of the true Sutures, but only the false and spurious. And al∣so you shall sometimes find the Sagittal to run to the nose.
And oft-times there be three or four Sutures in the back-part of the head, so that indeed the number of the Sutures is not certain.* 1.3 Which also we find observed by Cornelius Celsus, where he writes, that Hippocrates was deceived by the Sutures by chance; for that he conjectured, that the Bones of the back-part of the head, were broken; because his Probe, thrust to the roughness of the second suture Lambdoides, staied as at a cleft made in the Bone by a stroak.
The other two are called the false, stony, and scaly Sutures, by reason they are made by a sca∣ly conjunction of the Bones, but not by a toothed saw or comb-like connexion. But if any ask, why the head consists not of one Bone, that so it might be the stronger: I answer, It is, that so it might be the safer both from internal and external injuries.* 1.4 For the skull, being as it were the tun∣nel of the chimney of this humane fabrick, to which all the smoky vapours of the whole Body ascend, if it had been composed of one Bone, these vapours should have had no passage forth.
* 1.5Wherefore the grosser vapours pass away by the Sutures, but the more subtile by the pores of the skull; some have their Sutures very open, but others on the contrary very close.
Therefore nature hath otherwise compendiously provided for such as want Sutures; For it hath made one or two holes, some two fingers bredth from the Lambdoides, through which the Vena pu∣pis enters into the skull, and they are of that largeness that you may put a points tag into them, that the vapours may have free passage forth, otherwise there would be danger of death; thus nature hath been careful to provide for man against internal injuries: and in like manner against exter∣nal; for it hath made the head to consist of divers bones, that when one is broken, the other may be safe, the violence of the stroke being stayed in the division of the Bones.
* 1.6Whereby you may know, that if the skull chance to be broken in the opposite side to that which received the blow, that it happens either by reason of the defect of sutures, or else because they are unperfect, & too firmly closed; otherwise it is impossible such fractures should happen by reason of the separation of the Bones, which breaks the violence of the blow that it can go no further.
And certainly, as it is rare to find a skull without Sutures, so it is rare to find such kind of fractures. Therefore Chirurgeons must diligently observe the Sutures and site of them, lest they