flickering pictures

It’s called trepanation, and this extreme cousin to acupuncture has been around for at least 8,500 years. Though it’s recently fallen out of favour — mainly because it comes with a pretty fair chance brain damage, death, or searing agony at the very least — the practice is aimed at heightening the consciousness of the “trepanee,” and boosting his awareness of the world around him.

Trippy.

Here’s a brief history lesson from the extensively referenced Wikipedia article:

Trepanation (also known as trepanning, trephination, trephining or burr hole) is surgery in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the skull, thus exposing the dura mater in order to treat health problems related to intracranial diseases, though in the modern era it is used only to treat epidural and subdural hematomas and for surgical access for certain other neurosurgical procedures, such as intracranial pressure monitoring.

Trepanation was carried out for both medical reasons and mystical practices for a long time: evidence of trepanation has been found in prehistoric human remains from Neolithic times onwards, per cave paintings indicating that people believed the practice would cure epileptic seizures, migraines, and mental disorders. In prehistoric times, trepanation was thought to cure diseases by letting evil spirits escape. The bone that was trepanned was kept by the prehistoric people and worn as charms to keep evil spirits away.

In 2000, this guy decided to give trepanation a go, keeping a journal of his experiences before, during and after the operation. As no sane doctor would risk his license and his patient’s life on unnecessary cranial drilling, he did the natural thing and asked a buddy to perform the 3.5-hour procedure instead. Ignoring his friends’ “extreme apprehension,” he laid plastic sheeting around the room, shaved and sterilized his head, and headed to the hardware store for some surgical instruments.

From his diary, complete with some pretty gory photos:

As it got closer, we drilled more and more slowly. At one point he hit what we thought might be meninges because it squirted a bit of blood but quickly subsided. We were still doing OK. It was just a bone vessel and we knew that it might happen once or twice more. Luckily it did not. We drilled more and more, slow and careful and eventually saw what we were fairly certain was meninges. As he said he was seeing it, I felt a shivering tingle of energy up my back and up the back of my neck. We told him how to probe to be sure.

He turned one of the bits over and tapped around in the hole. Most of it went click click, because it was hitting bone still, but one part did not make sound. He had made it through to the meninges! I saw a video of this moment, and yes, you can see the brain pulsating!

The worst of it is that days after the ordeal was done, the poor guy arrived at “the frustrating conclusion that the trepanation has had no lasting effect,” and that, “[a]s much I hate to realize it, I believed what I wanted to believe.” No kidding. He warns others against similar experiments, and speaks out against a budding “underground craze” over the practice.

So kids, take it from him: drilling a hole in your head will not heighten your awareness of all things.

Image via Wikipedia.

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