Researchers analyzing a woman’s skeleton unearthed from a Copper Age graveyard on the Iberian Peninsula discovered clear and unmistakable proof that this individual had undergone two surgeries to her...
Researchers in Turkey have unearthed yet another trepanned skull. But was this brutal operation the work of magicians or medics? While the academic disciplines of neurology and neurosurgery didn't...
An ancient surgeon’s tomb has been discovered in Peru containing his grisly surgical weapons, including knives, needles and tumis – sharp metallic tools used for medical or sacrificial purposes...
A skull housed at the Museum of Osteology in Oklahoma is causing quite a stir. The ancient elongated skull, dating back 2,000 years, once belonged to a Peruvian warrior. After being injured during...
The surgically enhanced face and skull of an ancient tattooed Tashtyk man, hidden behind a stirring gypsum death mask for 1,700 years, has been 3D-visualized for the first time. Discovered wearing a...
Trephination (known also as trepanning, trepanation, trephining, or making a burr hole), is a surgical procedure, which involves the drilling of a hole in the skull of a living person. Trephination...
It’s no surprise that the history of medicine had a rocky and somewhat gruesome journey before reaching its current, modern state. From the earliest meddling in surgery in Classical Antiquity to the...
Archaeologists in Russia have found the grave of a warrior who did not die directly of his battle wounds but as a result of a failed surgical procedure performed on his skull. Near him was found a...
Chinese experts have determined that two skulls found in a historic site show evidence of ancient craniotomy. The finds are being taken to demonstrate that craniotomy, along with other advanced...
Dr. Mostafa Waziri, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt announced on Sunday that a team of researchers headed by Dr. Zeinab Hashish, Director of the Department of Studies...
Even with a highly skilled neurosurgeon, the most effective anesthesia, and all the other advances of modern medicine, most of us would cringe at the thought of undergoing cranial surgery today...
Trepanation – the technique of removing bone from the skull by scraping, sawing, drilling or chiselling – has long fascinated those interested in the darker side of medical history. One stock tale is...
In the modern age, when we think of surgery, we think of doctors working in sterile environments using finely crafted tools on an anesthetised patient. That was not always the case. Early surgical...
Just as people at the world’s oldest known temple site in Southeast Turkey began to make the transition from hunter-gatherers to a more settled lifestyle, they also started a “skull cult” in which...
Surgeries and treatments come and go. A new BMJ guideline, for example, makes “strong recommendations” against the use of arthroscopic surgery for certain knee conditions. But while this key-hole...
New evidence has emerged that suggests ancient surgeons in China were drilling or scraping holes in people’s heads more than 3,500 years ago. The process, known as trepanation, was used in various...
A step by step academic investigation into how Bronze Age medics conducted trepanation operations in Siberia has been conducted based on a male skull found last year in the Nefteprovod II burial...
A team of archeologists has unearthed a set of slate-stone instruments that are similar to scalpels. The artifacts are 4,000 years old and are believed to have been used by ancient Peruvian healers...
A remarkable discovery was made during excavations in a Neolithic settlement in Omdurman in Sudan – an ancient skeleton with signs of trepanation (drilling a hole in the skull), dating back around 7,...
Researchers believe holes cut in people’s skulls more than 4,000 years ago in Russia involved some kind of rite rather than medical surgery. Amazingly, some of the people, who were apparently very...
It is hard to fathom the way in which invasive surgery was carried out prior to the development of modern anaesthesia, but ancient people around the world have been cutting and drilling into the...
The skull of a man who was beheaded in the 15 th century was at the center of a mystery until experts revealed the cranium was harvested to be used as medicine. Within the crypt of Italy’s Otranto...
Russian scientists are examining ancient human skulls and testing bronze tools on a modern skull to see how doctors in Siberia more than 2,000 years ago performed brain surgery on three adults. It is...
Drilling holes in the head, otherwise known as trepanation , is the earliest surgical technique known. Holes were bored into a patient’s skull in an attempt to relieve physical ailments and mental...