Introduction
Skin and Cartilage Homografting.—Man's discovery of grafting tissues has its roots in the faraway past of prehistoric medicine. Early men of the Cro-Magnon type in various parts of the world performed the trephining operation with flint knives to cure epilepsy, headache, or mental disease. The ancient Peruvians covered the trephine opening in the bone with a gold plate to prevent a soft spot in the patient's skull which would be vulnerable to an enemy's knife or hand ax and to make a barrier against the entrance of an evil spirit. It is possible that these early surgeons occasionally replaced the bone removed at the trephining operation or used a piece of bone taken from another skull; this would represent the first use of bone autografts and bone homografts.Until quite recently primitive races in various parts of the world used bone grafts to replace a bone destroyed by