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The Hole Story on Trepanation

Hippocrates endorsed its use and it’s the world’s second oldest surgical procedure following circumcision. It’s called trepanation and it literally means drilling a hole in your head. And if you think it’s a bygone practice, think again. The practice of making a hole in the skull has been around since the Stone Age ⁠— archaeologists have found trepanned skulls dating back to 3000 B.C. Hippocrates, in his classic medical text “On Injuries of the Head,” endorsed trepanation for the treatment of head wounds. During the middle ages it was thought the procedure was able to liberate demons from the heads of the possessed and, later on, “enlightened” Europeans did it to cure maladies ranging from meningitis…

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 A Brief History of Trepanation, One of the World’s Oldest Surgeries

Throughout history, trepanation has been practiced in nearly every part of the world. It was performed in ancient Greece and Rome, and reportedly is used in parts of Africa, South America, and the South Pacific even today. In ancient Greece, doctors performed trepanation to relieve pressure, remove skull fragments from the brain after a traumatic accident, and drain fluid. From the Renaissance until the beginning of the 19th century, trepanation was routinely used to treat head wounds, and into the 18th century, it was used to treat epilepsy and mental disorders.

 A Hole in the Head: A History of Trepanation

Trephined skulls have been discovered in widespread locations in every part of the world, in sites dating from the late Paleolithic to this century. The relationship between the terms trepan and trephine is a curious one. The terms are now synonyms but have different origins and once had different meanings. In Hippocrates’ time the terms terebra and trepanon (from the Greek trupanon, a borer) were used for the instrument that is very similar to the modern trephine.

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An Interview with the Woman Who Drilled a Hole in Her Head to Open Up Her Mind

There are plenty of ways to achieve a higher state of consciousness. Most of them involve ingesting some kind of psychoactive substance, or getting in a white tank filled with water, or sitting in front of a flashing light while listening to trance music. But as far as I know, only one requires you to drill a hole into your forehead.

Ancient Legacy of Cranial Surgery

Cranial injury, as it is known today, is not a new concern of modern medicine. On stepping on the earth, the man was in reality encountered with various types of injuries, particularly those of a cranial nature. Leading a life, whether wild or civilized, has always been associated with injuries for human race from the very beginning of birth. Therefore, managing cases of this type has gradually forced him to establish and fix strategies and approaches to handle the dilemma.

Can a Hole in Your Head Get You High?

Of the weird conversations I’ve had in my life, many of the weirdest took place while I was researching my 2003 book Rational Mysticism, which explores religious experiences and other exotic states of consciousness.

Clues to Bronze Age cranial surgery revealed in ancient bones

Kalisher and the research team could tell the hole had been made in the man's skull while he was still alive and not too long before his death, from the color and slope of the cut, the fact that there had been no growth of the bone in the skull after that excision was made, and that care had been taken not to puncture a tissue layer protecting the brain.

Curiosities of medical history: Trepanation

Surgical interventions that require drilling a hole in the skull are now known as “trepanation.” People may have begun using this process earlier than the 19th century when modern neurosurgery began.

Discovering trepanation: the contribution of Paul Broca

PAUL BROCA WAS an icon of neuroscience and neurosurgery who also happened to be intrigued by trepanned skulls. His anthropological work established that, thousands of years ago, individuals not only trepanned skulls but also successfully performed these operations on living persons. After first commenting on a pre-Columbian Peruvian skull in 1867 (the first case of trepanning on a living person widely recognized as such), he turned to even older trepanned skulls found on French soil.

South America's Inca civilization was better at skull surgery than Civil War doctors

Cranial surgery without modern anesthesia and antibiotics may sound like a death sentence. But trepanation—the act of drilling, cutting, or scraping a hole in the skull for medical reasons—was practiced for thousands of years from ancient Greece to pre-Columbian Peru. Not every patient survived. But many did, including more than 100 subjects of the Inca Empire. A new study of their skulls and hundreds of others from pre-Columbian Peru suggests the success rates of premodern surgeons there was shockingly high: up to 80% during the Inca era, compared with just 50% during the American Civil War some 400 years later.

Stone Age brain surgery? It might have been more survivable than you think

There's no written record of Stone Age neurosurgery, but Rutkow theorizes it may have been conducted by a shaman on patients who were comatose or who had been otherwise injured. What's more, he says, physical evidence indicates that some patients likely survived: "With many of these older skulls, new bone growth had already formed, and bone in the skull can only form if the patient is alive," he says.

Stone Age Surgery

Explore the ancient surgical technique of trepanation, dating back 7,000 years, revealed through stunning skull discoveries.