Trepanning

I know the cure for thee.

Pull out sweet Dr. Trepanning device.

She sits down.

I start drilling into this skull.

There's an image of that.

Trepanation.

Yep.

Uh, then, or, or you might elongate the back of the skull every generation so that your kids don't have the same fucking headaches Grandpa did.

I had to look that up.

Trepanation is the ancient practice of drilling a literal hole into the human skull.

Yes, it is terrifyingly real.

The medical student's theory in the story is that relieving the pressure inside the skull increases blood flow to the brain and awakens latent supernatural human senses.

Okay, and again, layperson check.

Trephination? Brain trephination?

It's, it's early ver- form of brain surgery, where you, you go through the cranium and try to, um, if there's a blood clot, you try to remove that clot and, uh, k- keep the pressure from killing a person.

But the cool thing is, Iris, we actually see in Bram's notes, in the Rosenbach, that Thornley had drawn f- four or five pages of these notes where he's described how he did this on a real person, and actually the, the location of the holes to be drilled into the skull.

They also use moxa made of a fungus.

It has never been my good fortune to notice an example of trephining among our savage tribes, although I have seen a good many wounded, some of them in the head.

Trephining has been practiced by the aborigines of America, and the whole subject, as noted among the primitive peoples of all parts of the globe, has been treated in a monograph by Dr. Robert Fletcher, U.S. Army.

Dr. Fordyce Grinnell, who was for some years attached to the Wichita Agency as resident physician, has published the results of his observations in a monograph entitled The Healing Art as Practiced by the Indians of the Plains, in which he says, Wet cupping is resorted to quite frequently.

The surface is scarified by a sharp stone or knife, and a buffalo horn is used as the cupping glass.

They also use moxa made of a fungus.

It has never been my good fortune to notice an example of trephining among our savage tribes, although I have seen a good many wounded, some of them in the head.

Trephining has been practiced by the aborigines of America, and the whole subject, as noted among the primitive peoples of all parts of the globe, has been treated in a monograph by Dr. Robert Fletcher, U.S. Army.

Dr. Fordyce Grinnell, who was for some years attached to the Wichita Agency as resident physician, has published the results of his observations in a monograph entitled The Healing Art as Practiced by the Indians of the Plains, in which he says, Wet cupping is resorted to quite frequently.

The surface is scarified by a sharp stone or knife, and a buffalo horn is used as the cupping glass.