First off, apologies for the spelling, since I’ve only heard it talked about and never written. I am, of course, talking about the ancient art of knocking a hole in the skull to relieve pressure and cure headaches.
Anyway, my question is: does it work? Obviously the cons outweight the pros or it’d be more popular, but if you had the stomach for it would it relieve headaches?
I don’t know if it stops pain, but that was at least part of the idea. Also, part of the goal in the past was to let the funky little deamons out of your head. In the Gold Museum in Lima Peru, there are some skulls that show trepanation. The holes were filled with gold. Quite neat.
I fould this place. They seem to be a pro-trepanation site. I also remember seeing something about a person who was performing self trepanation as a sort of body modification motif.
Trepanation is still the indicated cure for a headache caused by active bleeding on the surface of the brain. Left unchecked, this bleeding will raise intra-cranial pressure, and force the brainstem to herniate out thru the hole in the base of the skull, resulting in death. However, less than 0.00001% of headaches are caused by intra-cranial hemorrhage, so don’t try this at home. I’d start with tylenol first.
Qadgop, MD
Thanks to both of you for the response, and epecially that website… they make it sound so alluring :). Still, I think if I start on mind expansion, I’ll start with Acid :).
From the trepanation web site:
Qadgop, please tell me that this is BS. Pulse wave? Accelerated metabolism? I do realize that trepanation does have a legit purpose, but “well being is the result”?
Can somebody get elective trepanation?
Well, it can cure them permanently if it goes really, really badly…
I consider it pure BS, Adam. And if you’ve got money and persistance, I’m sure you can get an elective trepanation. But no reputable physician would provide one for the reasons cited at the trepanation website.
QtM
Is this similar to the procedure shown in “From Hell” to cure insanity? If so, I’d stick with Excedrin.
Thank God I can’t remember the URL, but hubby and I saw a website done by a guy who decided to do it himself in a hotel room or a converted apartment, can’t remember which, with his girlfriend and buddy there to help. Apparently, he had heard that it would expand his consciousness, allow him to think more clearly, and reveal more of the spritual plane. Ok, whatever.
It was horrific.
Amazing what a few bucks, a medical supply store, a bone saw, and a boat-load of ignorance can get you.
Qadgop, this is the funniest thing I read today. Seriously. I have headaches, I even get migraines, but drilling a hole in my head is absolutely a LAST RESORT situation for me. Not really the same as drinking flat coke.
jar
There’s a lot more to trepanation than curing headaches.
It’s supposed to put you on a higher plane of existence. The hole in your head only needs to be around a centimeter in diameter.
Also, although there is a good amount of blood shed during the procedure, almost everyone who has been self-trepanned has said that the procedure is quite painless.
Although the procedure isn’t legal in America, you can go to Mexico and have a doctor do it under somewhat sterile conditions w/ anesthetic.
I’d do it. I’m still looking for the “Ask A Guy With A Hole in His Skull” thread
Venkman: This from a guy who was going to drill a hole through his head.
Egon: That would’ve worked.
Oh, now I’m convinced. 
yes, when I think safe, clean alternative medicine I always think:
Mexico
My impression from museum exhibits, etc. is that trepanning was done a lot in older times for reasons Qagdop indicates: venting the pressure from bleeding inside the skull. This would be necessary more then than now in an era when getting kicked in the head by a horse, mule, or cow was not that uncommon of an occurrence.
I would also think that throwing rocks, swinging clubs and maces, and so on as practiced in war in former times would have resulted in skull fractures more often than is seen now. This would possibly have necessitated trepanning to releive the intracranial pressure from bleeding as well.
Also as pointed out, the archelogocal evidence does indicate that an amazing number (more than zero) survived the procedure, so it became a part of accepted practice. However, this same evidence also indicates that a significant number of patients did NOT survive.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend the procedure unless one were stuck out where modern medicine wasn’t accessible, and even then only for actual conditions like nasty skull fractures. This is as opposed to conditons like not being able to understand common expressions like “I need like that like I need a hole in my head.”
Historically, It appears that trepanning (cutting a hole into the head) is different from the referenced porcedure in the painting by Bosch; I believe this is removing the “Stone of folly”, which I reckon to be kind of a very active form of Phrenology. My guess is that enough blood loss from messing around with knives on someone’s scalp would tend to calm down a lot of manic behavior.
I was just thinking…How cool would it be to get some trepanation done and have the hole covered with some clear plastic? I wouldn’t want to leave the hole uncovered, you know bugs and dirt and crap like that. But you’d really be able to show somebody what you were thinking.
I understood this to be essentially a lobotomy, actually separating the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain.
I hear decapitation works well for headaches too…
Trepanation, I need that like I need a hole in the head.
:: ducks and runs ::
The guy who did it to himself, with friends, posted a diary log on bme.freeq.com (the best body mod site out there, IMHO). I’m assuming this is the person a lot of you are talking about, since he was very into the “skull like a baby/higher plane of consciousness” thing. He was initially very happy about having done it, and posted several entries about how he thought he was begining to think more freely, etc. Then, several weeks after the surgery, he posted that he could actually detect no difference in his health, mood, or thinking. He blamed the short-term euphoria on the high of having accomplished the surgery he wanted so much. He was quite disappointed, but realistic about it. It was actually a highly interesting series of posts.
mischievous