NEW INSIGHTS ON THE SURGICAL PROCEDURE OF TREPHINATION THROUGHOUT HUMAN HISTORY

There is an abundance of archaeological and historical evidence from widely disparate localities of the world which indicate that ‘Trephination’/’Trepanning’? the removal of a circular portion of the human skull in order to gain access to intracranial maladies that are deemed to require curative treatment – has continued to be practiced down the ages from as far back as 5000 BCE, when flint instruments were used for the required excavation right down to modern neurosurgery. The trepanned skulls unearthed at various archaeological excavations from about the early 19th century, placed under systematic laboratory investigation in recent times, have generated a body of information, an overwhelmingly large proportion of which is ‘case-specific’. The present study, adopting as it does a comparative perspective, and focused exclusively on the cranial drilling component of brain surgery, presents a synthesis of finding from such investigations, selected to provide a spatially and temporally representative range of the practice of trephination. Among the insights provided in this study are that: (a) trephinations in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic times were often produced not by cross-cultural transfers of know-how, but were indigenous practices of trial and error, probably ritualistic in origin; (b) as indicated in laboratory findings on crania of pre-historic times, the analyses of calcification along the trepanned edges indicate that post-surgery survival of recipient patients was not entirely non-existent; and (c) in South Asia where the emphasis of traditional systems of curative treatment was on medication, surgery, even on the most delicate parts of the human anatomy, was not excluded.