Trepanation: The Ancient Brain Surgery That Actually Worked (Sometimes)

Imagine having a hole drilled into your skull while you're fully conscious, without anesthesia, using stone tools. Now imagine this was considered medicine for thousands of years - and archaeologists have found 10,000-year-old skulls showing signs that patients actually survived the procedure. Trepanation is humanity's oldest surgical procedure, and we've been doing it since the Stone Age.

Ancient surgeons would drill, scrape, or cut circular holes into living people's skulls to treat headaches, mental illness, epilepsy, and "evil spirits." Amazingly, many prehistoric skulls show bone regrowth around the holes, proving patients survived for months or years after the procedure. Some skulls have multiple holes from repeated surgeries. The survival r ...