By
Sam Webb
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Healers in Peru carried out cranial surgery more than a thousand years ago to treat a host of conditions – often successfully.
Without the benefits of a sterile operating theatre, state-of-the-art surgical instruments, anaesthetic and pain medication, the ancient people of the South American country undertook a surgical procedure that involves removing a section of the skull using a hand drill or a scraping tool – a practice called trepanation.
It was used to treat a variety of ailments, mainly head injuries but even, bizarrely, a broken heart.
Gruesome: Some 900 years ago, Peruvian healers used hand drills to make dozens of small holes in a patient’s skull
Excavating burial caves in the south-central Andean province of Andahuaylas in Peru, University of California bioarchaeologist Danielle Kurin and her research team unearthed the remains of 32 individuals that date back to the Late Intermediate Period (around AD 1000-1250).
Among them, 45 separate trepanation procedures were in evidence.
‘When you get a knock on the head that causes your brain
