• bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    It was a lot more brutal and had a much lower success rate back then. But the fact that we find so many skulls with evidence of trepanning means that prehistoric humans must have considered the low success rate worth the risk. What’s interesting is there’s no way they actually knew what trepanning could help with, since it’s to do with intracranial pressure. So in the same way the medieval cure for everything was bleeding, whether or not the disease had anything to do with blood, trepanning seems to have been the proverbial hammer for which everything looks like a nail.

    • ryannathans@aussie.zone
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      4 months ago

      Head injuries would have been common, bleeding on the brain was probably easily recognisible in warriors for which it would help. How they discovered that it helps… nice