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        Surgery can be

interesting, it's all in how you look at it! It's better to look at it from a distance! Many kinds of surgery have been around for thousands of years.  The instruments which used to be very simple are more complicated now, and doctors today make surgery as painless as possible.  

.Ancient Surgery tools                  Trepanning is the oldest surgery know to man. It is basically boring, cutting, and scraping open holes in a human skull. (The word comes from the Greek trupanon, meaning borer.) It was practiced as early as 10,000 B.C. in Europe, South  America, and some parts of Northern Africa.  

Many trepanned skulls have been found, from the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Eastern, Chinese, Indian, and African cultures. Historians think that holes were cut in the skull to cure headaches, treat brain disorders,  let out evil spirits, or treat insanity.  Scientists have evidence that people actually survived the surgeries and sometimes came back for many more! As if one wasn't enough!   


In trepanned skulls, the bone began to heal and form new bone, so the patient lived after the procedure!  These surgeries were done without anesthesia (deadening), probably while the patient was fully awake. Pieces of bone cut from the skull were carried as good luck charms for doctors. I need such doctors like a hole in the head! 

A trepanning operation in Africa was filmed in the 1960's.  The patient was wide awake, had nothing to deaden the pain, and talked to the tribal doctor while he removed a piece of bone from her skull! I think I'd rather keep the headache!

A prehistoric skull showing trepanning scars. In many cultures,  a terrible headache would call for a hole in the head!!

Is that where the expression came from?

The tools are sharp enough to get past the skin and cut into bone.

From Roman times on, many physicians ground up the bone slabs they removed and mixed them with drinks to treat several diseases!

Hippocrates, the "father of modern medicine," wrote instructions on how to perform skull trepanning for medical reasons.
The Aztecs used this to cut the skull about 1300 AD. This is a 19th century trephine saw.

Well into the 18th century, trepanning was a common practice!  Supposedly, Prince Philip of Orange was trepanned seventeen times by his physician!  One French doctor drilled fifty-two holes in the skull of one patient, all within two months.

Every trepanning session took from thirty to sixty minutes to finish.  Scientists think that about 70% of patients survived, and many had repeated sessions.  The operation wasn't usually what killed the patient, it was infection afterward.

Trepanning is still used today to treat blood leaking in the brain, causing pressure. Some African tribes perform it the old-fashioned way, no pain killer, no hospital!

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