Ancient Trepanation
Cranial surgery is tricky business, even under 21st-century conditions (think aseptic environment, specialized surgical instruments and copious amounts of pain medication both during and afterward).
However, evidence shows that healers in Peru practiced trepanation — a surgical procedure that involves removing a section of the cranial vault using a hand drill or a scraping tool — more than 1,000 years ago to treat a variety of ailments, from head injuries to heartsickness. And they did so without the benefit of the aforementioned medical advances.
Excavating burial caves in the south-central Andean province of Andahuaylas in Peru, UC Santa Barbara bioarchaeologist Danielle Kurin and her research team unearthed the remains of 32 individuals that date back to the Late Intermediate Period (ca. AD 1000-1250). Among them, 45 separate trepanation procedures were in evidence. Kurin’s findings appear in the current issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Source and further reading:
http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2013/013852/ancient-cranial-surgery
Reference:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.22383/abstract
Image: Some 900 years ago, a Peruvian healer used a hand drill to make dozens of small holes in a patient's skull.
Image credit: Danielle Kurin
Tutto ciò mi ricorda che un mio amico ha subito, con esito felice, un'operazione simile pochi giorni fa..
ReplyDeleteI guess you're right Nat Manley . So depravation was treated with trepanation.
ReplyDeleteLike literally "I'll take out the wrong ideas you have in your brain"
Bob Walker Coca it seems
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca#Medicine
I was going to say: they did have painkillers back then, albeit less precise ones than now. In fact, I've read that chemical surgical anaesthetics were in regular usage until the 1700's, when people became convinced that they were a bad idea.
ReplyDeleteOh well perhaps they used opium poppy or some other herbs.
ReplyDeleteSounds like torture Thomas McKeown
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteMaybe these skull remains are from a moon cult tribe and their trendy fashion of the day was to get moon crater patterns installed on their craniums. Think tattoos with drills instead needles. Imagine them performing the operations on nights with full moons, so that the howls of pain of those receiving their nifty moon craters would simulate the sacred wolf howls...
<\WarpedImagination>
Admittedly a weird thought.... = )
Although I'm being facetious, there have been many societies that practiced (horrific) ritual disfigurement. Even into recent times. For example, the African Barabaig right of passage: http://books.google.ca/books?id=9dcr4U0yBRAC&lpg=PA258&ots=sjaNu-rV4u&dq=Barabaig%20skull%20right%20of%20passage&pg=PA258#v=onepage&q=Barabaig%20skull%20right%20of%20passage&f=false
Nat Manley I know what the article says, but let me remove a piece of your cranial vault first and then you can tell how you really feel.
ReplyDeleteAre you in? =D
Ha! Sean Walker you're being voodooish now =)
ReplyDeleteOh sure Corina Marinescu you have the kahunas when its your nose but not your cranium? And to think you were reaching heroic proportions in my estimations... =D
ReplyDeleteThomas McKeown the only alien operation I like is this
ReplyDeletePrometheus Surgery Scene (High Quality)
Love it! =)
Thank Ra I'm just a human Sean Walker ! =)
ReplyDeleteWell we could still try it Nat Manley , and you could tell me how heaven looks like..or hell =)
ReplyDeleteOr what type of seat has God's bike =D
Well...then dress up like an ancient or undress and I'll whisper some incantations. Of course just for the sake of exorcism ...wait, no..for the sake of taking out the bad spirits. Please let me take a piece of your skull and dura and see what demons you have in there.
ReplyDeleteLOL Corina Marinescu your dark motivations to become an MD are revealed.... ;)
ReplyDeleteTo become? =)
ReplyDeleteHmm... I'm working on the image to respond with...
ReplyDeleteOkay, my first mental approximation is an Aegean blue eyed, female Sweeney Todd / Dr Frankestein like figure wearing a dramatically blood splashed surgery gown. She's wielding a long scalpel in one hand and a grey matter speckled drilling device in the other. Oh and of course, one her thin eyebrows is raised in demonic anticipation of the next victim/patient.
I think that's in the right ball park anyway - you getting the gist of this? :)
Let me take my Gothic font.. wait, no, let me take the orbitoclast =D
ReplyDeleteNeat, I like the image =) Sean Walker