Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t3.13

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embryonic development; but in the case of the frontal bone they remain separated by the metopic suture, and do not become fused till about the fifth or sixth year after birth. In fact, traces of the metopic suture persist throughout life between the two superciliary ridges of the frontal bone; and in a certain percentage (about 8 per cent.) of individuals even the whole of it persists in the adult¹ (Figs. 29, 32). Either of the two halves of the frontal and occipital bones forms a separate cavity, divided by their respective crests (Figs. 27 and 28). Thus Suśruta is justified in counting ‘six pan-shaped bones of the cranium’, these being, on his principle of division, two frontal, two parietal, and two occipital. In fact in this particular, his system marks an advance on that of Ātreya-Charaka, inasmuch as it shows Suśruta’s acquaintance with the existence of the metopic suture. He had, no doubt, observed its surviving traces between the superciliary