Tag: trepanning
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A hole in the head and a world of skill
Richard de GrijsSydney, Australia In the dim confines of a ship’s sickbay during the golden age of piracy, the sound of waves might have been interrupted by the rasp and twist of a surgical drill biting into bone. Trepanning—the act of boring into the skull to relieve the pressure on the brain following head trauma—was…
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Evidence of a skull trepanning
Alexandru Gh. SonocSibiu, Romania The man shown here wears a blue velvet hat with a white feather and a brown-reddish cloak. Around his neck he has a brocade scarf in red, ocher, and blue. He has long hair, a short moustache, and a short square-shaped facial hair spot (Fliege) on the lower lip. The right…
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Bosch’s Stone Operation: Meaning, medicine, and morality
Laurinda DixonNew York, United States The Stone Operation (fig. 1) (ca. 1488 or later), also known as The Cure of Folly, by the Dutch fifteenth-century painter Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1450-1516), is, like all of his works, bizarre and incomprehensible by modern standards of reality.1 The painting depicts a surgeon, dressed in the characteristic reddish robe…