Home || News|| Class || Books || Film || Links

Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Old English... brain surgery? 
The BBC reports today that a skull found near the abandoned village of Wharram Percy in Yorkshire shows evidence of trepanning. Trepanning is a primitive form of surgery that involves relief of pressure in the brain cavity by boring (or, here, expanding) a hole in the skull. The skull in question seems to have belonged to a peasant who lived between the 10th and 12th centuries. He probably received a blunt trauma wound that created a hole in his skull, which was then cleaned and expanded by healers to relieve swelling:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3714992.stm

Scholar Brian Mays, a skeletal biologist with English Heritage, notes that the use of such an elaborate procedure on a peasant is incongruous with long held notions about healing practices in Anglo-Saxon times.

†this post made by Jerry : 8:19 AM


Archives: