The operation was done for epilepsy, infantile
convulsions, headache, and various cerebral diseases believed to be
caused by confined demons, to whom the hole gave a ready method of
escape.
(2) Lucas-Championniere: Trepanation neolithique, Paris,
1912.
The practice is still extant. Lucas-Championniere saw a Kabyle thoubib
who told him that it was quite common among his tribe; he was the son of
a family of trephiners, and had undergone the operation four times,
his father twelve times; he had three brothers also experts; he did not
consider it a dangerous operation. He did it most frequently for pain in
the head, and occasionally for fracture.
The operation was sometimes performed upon animals. Shepherds trephined
sheep for the staggers. We may say that the modern decompression
operation, so much in vogue, is the oldest known surgical procedure.
EGYPTIAN MEDICINE
OUT of the ocean of oblivion, man emerges in history in a highly
civilized state on the banks of the Nile, some sixty centuries ago.
After millenniums of a gradual upward progress, which can be traced in
the records of the stone age, civilization springs forth Minerva-like,
complete, and highly developed, in the Nile Valley.
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