Evidence of Trepanation On 4,000-Year-Old Skull
[Original headline: Ancient skull found in Thames gives insight into Bronze Age brain surgery]
LONDON (AP) -- A Bronze Age man whose skull was fished out of the River Thames survived one of Britain's earliest forms of brain surgery, archeologists said Tuesday.
The 4,000-year-old skull, found in October, has a 4.5-centimetre by three-centimetre hole in the top, suggesting the man had undergone trepanation, a procedure in which a portion of the skull is removed from a living patient.
The bone had re-grown around the hole, indicating the patient -- an adult male who lived around 1750 BC -- survived the operation, performed without anesthetic.
"Trepanning is probably the oldest form of surgery we know," said Simon Mays, an expert on human skeletal remains with the conservation group English Heritage.
"The trepanning on this skull would have been carried out with a scraping tool, probably a flint, using great care to avoid piercing the brain."
The procedure was long thought to cure headaches and migraines by relieving pressure in the head. It was also believed that carving a hole in the head would release evil spirits that caused epilepsy or mental illness.
A variation is still used today to alleviate pressure from bleeding in the brain.
About 40 trepanned skulls have been found in Britain, with the oldest about 5,000 years old.
English Heritage said the surgery appears to have become a specialty in Britain, with practitioners using the scraping technique -- more accurate than sawing, gouging or drilling through the skull -- to give a "remarkable level of survival."
"The skull shows that there were people in Britain at the time with significant anatomical and surgical skills, ones not bettered in Europe until classical Greek and Roman times more than a thousand years later," Mays said.
• Story originally published by:
Cnews / Canada - Aug 20.02
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