Ancient surgery
Earliest times
For millennia, humanity practised primitive preventive medicine – for this was all it could do – by appeasing the gods through ritual and sacrifice. However, a body of knowledge gradually built up, based on chance observation and trial and error.
A hole in the head
To people who believed that disease was caused by evil spirits, it was – if the exorcisms of shamans and witch doctors failed to work – logical to drill the skull of a person suffering from a blinding headache, to release these spirits.
Trepanation is one of the very few prehistoric medical practices for which we have archaeological evidence, and the only surgical one. It involved cutting a small hole in the skull, often with an instrument resembling a carpenter’s bit with a handle. The procedure was used to treat headaches, skull fractures, epilepsy and some forms of mental illness.
Amulets
It was employed around the world – in Neolithic Gaul (now France), Bohemia (Czech Republic), north Africa, Asia, Tahiti, New Zealand and South America. It was particularly popular in ancient Peru, where sharp knives of obsidian, stone and bronze were used.
Skulls have been found with as many as five trepanned holes. People who survived the operation (and some did, as healed skulls attest) had their wounds covered with a piece of gourd, stone, shell or even silver and gold. In Europe, the excised rounds of skull bone were worn as amulets.
