The hypothesis of the vertebral structure of the skull was due both to Goethe, the great German poet, and Oken, a most able but somewhat mystic German anatomist.  An attempt had been made by a well-known English anatomist to cast on Goethe the stigma of having tried to rob Oken of the credit for this theory.  Huxley set that matter finally at rest, disproving and repelling with indignation the unworthy suggestion.  Oken gave out his theory in 1807, and described how it had been first suggested to his mind by the accident of picking up a dried and battered sheep’s skull, in which the apparent vertebral structure was very obvious, as, indeed, anyone may see at a glance.  It was in 1820, long after the theory had been made current, that the poet first publicly narrated that in a similar way he had long before come to the same conclusion; but Huxley was able to show that, although announcing it later, Goethe had in reality anticipated the anatomist.  A passage occurs in a letter to a friend, of a date in 1790, which admits of no doubt.  “By the oddest happy chance, my servant picked up a bit of an animal’s skull in the Jews’ cemetery at Venice, and, by way of a joke, held it out to me as if he were offering me a Jew’s skull.  I have made a great step in the formation of animals.”  It is an interesting trait in Huxley’s character, to find him zealous in defence of the reputation of a great man, even although that man had been dead more than half a century; but it may be added that his just zeal was at least stimulated by the fact that the maligner of Goethe was Owen, the conduct of whom, with regard to Darwin and Huxley, Huxley had had just reason for resenting.

The theory, then, which had dropped stillborn from Goethe, but which Oken developed, was simply that the skull consisted of a series of expanded vertebrae.  Each vertebra consists of a basal piece or centrum, the anterior and posterior faces of which are closely applied to the face of an adjoining vertebra, and of a bony arch or ring which encloses and protects the nervous cord.  Oken supposed that there were four such vertebrae in the skull, the centra being firmly fused and the arches expanded to form the dome of the skull.  Quite correctly, he divided the skull into four regions, corresponding to what he called an ear vertebra, at the back, through which the auditory nerves passed; a jaw vertebra, in the sphenoidal region, through which the nerves to the jaws passed; an eye vertebra in front, pierced by the optic nerves, and again in front a nose vertebra, the existence of which he doubted at first.  Quite rightly, he discriminated between the ordinary bones of the skull and the special structures surrounding the inner ear which he declared to be additions derived from another source.  So far it cannot be doubted that the vertebral theory made a distinct advance in our knowledge of the skull.  It was to a certain extent, however, thrown into disrepute by various fantastic theories with which Oken surrounded