I was intrigued reading about Peter Halvorson’s depression
cure: Trepanation, or creating a hole in the skull. I decided to do further
research into it and found that it was most commonly used to alleviate pressure
in the head, improve brain pulsations and an individual’s overall well being. A
trepan is the tool used to make the
hole in the head. Many have claimed that after this “operation” they feel
happier and more energetic. This practice, surprisingly enough, has been around
since the Stone Age! The idea behind this practice is to revert an individual’s
brain to its original state, with a soft spot on the skull similar to the soft
spot on top of a newborns head, allowing the baby’s brain to pulse freely. Many
doctors now state that trepanation was based on magical, superstitious, and /or
religious reasons, not for medical reasons. When I first read about this practice,
I automatically thought of brain lobotomies. Both seem like barbaric and scary
practice to me. I will not be looking into getting this done, personally, nor
would I recommend it to anyone else!
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I must say this is absolutely terrifying; also it would be curious to know if there was some sort of statistics for survival since this had to be a dangerous and painful process,I cant imagine every patient survived the operation?
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ReplyDeleteThis sounds like an awful, painful practice that I would not want any part of either! I was curious to know if there are other horror movie enthusiasts in the class that immediately thought of the same movie scene I did. The act of trepanation occurred in a gruesome scene in the movie Saw III. If anyone would like to see the scene, this the direct URL where you can watch and enjoy all you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUe7Jvvaiz8&oref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DtUe7Jvvaiz8&has_verified=1
ReplyDeleteFor those of you "normal" people who would rather not watch and have nightmares for ages I will just explain what happened. Although Trepanation was once done for the cure of depression like stated above, in this scene, the character "Lynn" performs this operation to Jigsaw for purely health reasons. Jigsaw had a tumor in the brain and needed to release some pressure that built up blood created. WARNING: do not watch the clip if you feel like eating anytime soon.