Sunday, January 19, 2014

Insane Ancient Medical Cures - Trepanation




Trepanation
Trepanation is a fancy word for drilling holes in your head. This is actually the oldest surgical procedure known to man as humans have been intentionally knocking holes in their skulls dating back to the time of cavemen, giving hope to anyone who's had to watch the sitcom starring the Geico cavemen that all of them might die in a trepanation experiment horribly gone wrong in an upcoming episode.
Historically trepanation was most commonly used as treatment for seizures and migraines. Surprise, surprise. Having a gaping hole drilled in your skull (usually without anesthesia) did very little to help people's headaches or brain issues. Trepanation was also used as an extreme form of cosmetic/experimental body modification amongst several societies such as the Incans and Mayans. These societies also got largely wiped out, then a few hundred years later suffered the indignity of having an insulting Mel Gibson movie made about them, so it didn't really work out that well.
      

Oh, and yes, a few brilliant individuals still practice trepanation to this day. To give you an idea of the oh-so-solid ground today's trepanation supporters' beliefs are built on, the biggest modern proponent of trepanation is a "Doctor" Bart Hughes. We put doctor in quotations marks because he never actually finished medical school. That's right kids, you, too, can be a college dropout and yet still go onto a career convincing people around the world to do incredibly retarded things, so reach for those stars.

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