Tuesday, March 06, 2007

An important P.S.A.

This morning, I decided that I should educate my readers on the strange and often misundstood practise of trepanation.

Trepanation is the deliberate drilling/cutting/scraping of a whole in the skull. It's an ancient procedure, dating pack to prehistoric times. Skulls found in a burial ground in France that dated back as far as 6500 BCE, were found have trepanation holes. There is also evidence that the individuals who underwent the procedure survived it, and died some time after. It also a common practise among medieval and renaissance doctors. It was used as a treatment for mainy ailments, including headaches, tumors, head injuries, epileptic siezures, insanity, and other problems.

More recently, trepanation has begun to gain popularity as a cure for chronic depression, and many others beleive it is a short cut to enlightenment. A crazy lady in England performed trepanation on herself, using a power drill (Pi anyone?) and filmed it. She survived, and went on to try and run for British parlaiment. Her slogan had something to do with trepanation, and she lost.

In my breif attempt to research trepanation, I came across a few interesting things.

First off:

This is a hippo's skull. NEAT.



Secondly, in reading up on the history of trepanation in Mesoamerica, I came across this:




NEAT.

I wanted to find more pictures of this, but had trouble and gave up.


For further reading on trepanation, check this out:

http://www.bmezine.com/news/people/A10101/trepan/


Accounts of a guy who had trepanation performed on him. Includes vague pictures!


Also, listen to this:


http://jnjmuse.cnei.or.kr/musicbox_2/rhapsody_on_a_theme_by_paganini_op43.mp3


It's Rachmanninoff and it's wonderful.

6 comments:

Andrew Kurjata said...

Neat.

Naomi said...

COOL!!! Skulls of large mammals are pretty interesting.

She said...

have you read the "his dark materials" series? they talk about trepanning... except in ancient times it wasn't used just for healing, it was used be priests and shaman to create a closer connection between them and "god"

T.R. said...

I fucking love hippos!

Jeremy K. said...

You call that a skull?

This-- http://www.ntsg.umt.edu/personnel/faithann/fa%20and%20bowhead.JPG -- is a skull.

Naomi said...

COOL!

 
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