Trepanation. The Way To Higher Consciousness? Essay, Research Paper

Throughout the history of the human race, world has been locked in a

changeless battle with its ain restrictions and imperfectnesss. Bound by norms and

societal stratification, civilisation has molded itself into a conformist society. The

same society that looks upon extremist medicative patterns and alternate ways of

believing with contempt. One medical usage met with great resistance from most

civilizations is that of trepanation. Elaborated in this text will be the history, truths and

falsities, popular positions, and clinical certification of the pattern of

trepanation and grounds behind the usage of this type of surgery.

Trepanation is one of the earliest surgical operations known. There is

ample grounds to demo that it was practiced by crude adult male in prehistoric times.

The scraping of a hole in the braincase by ancient adult male was likely carried out

with the purpose of alleviating strivings in the caput or bring arounding epilepsy, and at the same

clip supplying an issue for an evil spirit to get away from. Recently, archeologists

hold discovered a 7,000-year-old burial site at Ensisheim, in the Gallic part of

Alsatia. At this site is the earliest grounds of trepanation. The burial contains the

well-preserved skeleton of a adult male, who died at approximately 50 old ages of age, every bit good as

an arrowhead and an adze typically dated to 5100-4900 BC, a day of the month corroborated

by a carbon 14 sample from the bone. Two trepanations had been carried out on

this adult male. One toward the forepart of the skull, mensurating 2.6 by 2.4 inches, had

healed wholly. The 2nd had merely partly healed, likely because of its

tremendous size ( 3.7 by 3.6inches ) . The larger trepanation appears to hold been

produced by crossing scratchs, and the smaller 1 may hold been made in the

same manner. The long-run healing evident from the bone indicates the operations

were successful. ( Walker, 2-8 )

In the Western hemisphere, trepanning was practiced at an early period by

the ancient Incas of Peru, who performed it with great sleight. Scientists have

found that 5 to 6 per centum of the antediluvian skulls excavated in Peru show that

trepanning was resorted to for curative grounds. The Incas preferred square

gaps, and the operation is still practiced by native medicine work forces among some

folks in South America in much the same mode as it was carried out in antediluvian

times. The patient & # 8217 ; s caput was held tightly between the sawbones & # 8217 ; s articulatio genuss ; the patient

reclining and the physician sitting. An scratch was so made in the scalp and a

subdivision of bone, about an inch square, removed from the skull. The

instrument employed was a crisp piece of flint or hardened Cu with a unsmooth

border, which was used by rubbing the border backwards and forwards along the

bone. ( Thompson 23 )

In western civilisation we find that trepanning was practiced freely in the

clip of Hippocrates ( c. 400 B.C. ) . The instruments employed by the early Hellenic

sawboness varied, and included the trerbra, or bore, chiefly used for doing a circle

of holes around the down bone, which was operated by a lash around the

Centre or on a cross beam. For the same intent, the trepanon, operated by a bow,

like a drill, was sometimes employed to do the perforations, and the interspaces

between each hole were broken up by the scalpel so that the roundel of bone could

be removed. ( Haeger, 14-15 )

The first invention in what we now know as the modern trephine was

introduced towards the terminal of the sixteenth century, when in 1575 Matthia Barvatio

invented a mechanical instrument which was operated by a cog wheel turned by

the manus. This was connected with another wheel, which when rotated actuated a

handbill saw which cut into the bone. This device finally turned out to be excessively

heavy and clumsly to be used skilfully. ( Haeger, 16 )

Towards the stopping point of the nineteenth century, there was a return to some of the

earlier types of instruments. In 1889, the trephine was introduced as a mechanical

rotatory trepan. Mechanical drill-stocks besides came to be used with drills or

trepans. Several old ages subsequently, the trephine was introduced with a crutch shaped

grip, but since that clip no pronounced alteration appears to hold been made in this

instrument employed on the braincase. ( Haeger, 17 )

In today & # 8217 ; s context, most trepanations are carried out for the interest of achieving

a higher degree of consciousness. For the most portion, a Dutch medical scientist

named Bart Huges can be cited for the revival of trepanation in modern

society. In 1962, the physiology underlying consciousness was brought to visible radiation by

Huges. The discovery in understanding concerned the fact that the degree of

consciousness is dependent on the entire measure of blood in the capillaries of the

encephalon ; when that measure is increased, the consequence is accelerated encephalon metamorphosis

and therefore an enhanced degree of neurological operation. However, three BASIC

factors & # 8211 ; the force of gravitation, the comparative denseness of blood compared to H2O, and

the imprisonment of the encephalon in a instance of bone & # 8211 ; do a job for adult male in his

unsloped place. This job is a deficit of blood in the encephalon capillaries which

necessitates lasting repression from map of most of the encephalon, symptoms of

which appear throughout human behaviour. The solution is to increase the encephalon & # 8217 ; s

blood volume. This can be brought about by trepanation ; an grownup & # 8217 ; s & # 8216 ; brain-blood

floor & # 8217 ; can be raised for good to the degree it was at during childhood and young person

when cranial suturas had non for good closed yet. ( Hughes, 42-50 )

Methods of heightening consciousness are every bit old as adult male. What is new is the

account of how they work ; i.e. the description of the physiological mechanism

behind the experience. The inquiry as to whether the encephalon pulsates when the

skull is wholly closed and to the full ossified, as it is known to make in unfastened skulls, is

one of the cardinal jobs in the survey of intellectual blood circulation. This

inquiry is of premier importance because those who have been trepanned province that

the pulsation of blood to the encephalon from the circulatory system is critical for achieving

a higher consciousness. ( Sokoloff, 66 )

Brain pulsing is clearly seeable in the infant kid. The soft tissue on the

top of the caput known as the soft spot rises and falls with the crushing bosom. This

enlargement and contraction on the pulse does non endanger the baby & # 8217 ; s good

heal

Thursday. However, within the first few months of life this tissue hardens into skull

bone. The ocular grounds that the bosom round still reaches into the encephalon vanishes

before our eyes. Still the baby & # 8217 ; s good wellness is unaffected. But does the bosom

pulsing ( besides known as cardiac beat ) continue to be inside the skull even if

it can & # 8217 ; t be seen? This is an of import inquiry scientists have posed.

The first positions on the causes of intellectual pulsings may be found in the

plants of Galen ( 131-201 A.D. ) whose observations were based on observations in

animate beings. He suggested that encephalon pulsings were straight related to the respiratory

beat, and were due to seepage of air into the intellectual ventricles through the

cribriform home base. He besides considered encephalon pulsings to be possible because of the

being of a vacuity between the cerebrum and the dura. ( Michell, 53 )

Subsequently, Vesalius ( 1600 ) wrote on the motions of the encephalon in new-born

babes and grownups who had sustained cranial hurts and on animate beings whose skulls

were opened in vivisection surveies. The encephalon motions were ascribed to the

pulsings of the arterial subdivisions of the dura. It was therefore thought that these encephalon

motions were due to its swelling following the increased blood content

following each pulse moving ridge. ( Michell, 57-58 )

After the find of the cerebrospinal fluid in which the encephalon substance

bathes, nevertheless, the job of the being or absence of encephalon pulsings was

approached in an wholly different visible radiation ( Contugno, 1864 ; Magendie, 1825 ) . It

so became clear that the infinite between the surface of the encephalon and the dura

mater which once was thought to be filled with compressible air, was really

filled by the incompressible cerebrospinal fluid. A reappraisal of the work of different

research workers published during the past century shows that some of them were able

to work out the job as to whether encephalon pulsings exist in the closed skull pit,

as long ago assumed by Galen. Such a procedure was possible merely when 1

assumed the being in the encephalon of a infinite filled with air, leting for

changes of the intellectual volume. When the cerebrospinal fluid was discovered, it

was recognized that the cranial pit was wholly filled and the point of position

that intellectual pulsings in the hermetically closed skull were non possible besides

appeared in the literature. Because of this determination, Muller ( 1839 ) and Bourguignon

( 1839 ) were of the sentiment that intellectual pulsings did non be. An effort to

support this position by experimentation was made by Pelehtan. Into the skull of a Canis familiaris he

inserted a glass tubing and recognized that the cranial pit was wholly filled

with fluid and intellectual pulsings would non be possible. ( Hughes, 78-85 )

Brain pulsing, or intracranial pulse force per unit area, has mostly been ignored as a

topic for probe by the medical constitution in Western Europe and

America. The primary research workers in modern times have been Russian. Most

of import amongst them is B.N. Klosovskii, who is otherwise recognized

internationally for his methods of analyzing blood circulation in the encephalon. In the

mid 1950 & # 8217 ; s he developed methods of tissue staining that allowed the arterias and

the venas of the encephalon to be clearly distinguishable. The vascular bed was so for

the first clip clearly mapped. His chief work, Blood Circulation In The Brain, was

translated from the Russian in 1963 and published under an understanding with U.S.

Public Health Service. The last several chapters of Klosovskii & # 8217 ; s text trade with the

thoughts of encephalon pulsing and his belief that there is no pulsation in a closed skull.

( Colton )

Klosovskii, nevertheless, is non without critics. Other Russian research workers

challenge his findings. In their work Hemodynamicss of Cerebral Circulation, besides

published by the U.S. Public Health Service, Moskalenko and Naumenko take up

the instance against Klosovskii. Using electric resistance electroplethysmography, an wholly

different method than Klosovskii & # 8217 ; s direct observation through a & # 8220 ; transparent

window, & # 8221 ; they find that there is a & # 8220 ; pulse wave & # 8221 ; in the hermetically sealed skull.

Their measurings indicate that this pulsation is in the order of 1-2mm of H2O.

Cardiac beat, pulse force per unit area, or pulsing is usually measured in millimeter. of

Mercury ( mm.Hg ) non mm. of H2O. The difference in order of magnitude here is

one to thirteen. ( Thirteen millimeter of H2O peers one millimeter of quicksilver ) . They conclude,

& # 8220 ; in the hermetical pit of the braincase, the pulsation moving ridge is transmitted indirectly

from the arterial system into the venas and in making so bypasses the capillary bed. & # 8221 ;

The & # 8220 ; pulse wave & # 8221 ; that they had measured in the closed skull is in no manner

equivalent to the presence of & # 8220 ; pulse force per unit area & # 8221 ; that Klosovskii observes on the

intellectual surface in the unfastened skull. ( Michell, 97-98 )

In a 1960 reappraisal titled Soviet Probes in the Field of the Vascular

Supply of the Brain, the celebrated American encephalon physiologist, Ernst Simonson,

differences those research workers utilizing electric resistance plethysmography. He says, & # 8220 ; The

point of views are in demand of verification, as it is instead hard to conceive of that

changes of intracerebral force per unit area of merely 1 to 2 millimeter. H2O column can take to

blood being expressed from the intellectual venas, no affair how thin-walled these

may be. & # 8221 ; ( Hughes, 111-119 )

Many people in today & # 8217 ; s society consider trepanation to be a sort of blood-

allowing. An operation done in the hopes it will do a individual better, but instead

winds up aching the ill worse. For 1000s of old ages, a choice few in society

hold stood up for patterns they believed would break their life. In the instance of

trepanation, possibly those who open their skull should non be looked down upon as

loony. These choice few, in their ain eyes, have seen all the cogent evidence they need to

see this operation as a feasible manner of doing their life more fulfilled.

Reviewing the information that has been published, every bit good as the testing of new

theories by scientists and doctors, will hopefully reply the inquiry of whether

or non the human race is being retained from accomplishing a higher province of being.

However, even if it is proven that a hermetically-closed skull does in fact pulsation,

many would hold it would non halt the act of trepanation. Peoples who decide to

carry out the procedure of opening their skull would still stand with the impression that

increasing one & # 8217 ; s encephalon blood volume is the lone manner to increase a individuals province of

being.