OLD SURGICAL OPERATIONS.
There is 110 doxibt thai some rough form of surgery must liayo existed l'rom very ancient tunes, but it is strange to.find that so complex and dclicatu an operation as trepanning is one of ilie oluest. So far as actual records go, Hippocrates gives us tho earliest account, lie wroto ■treatises on fractures, dislocations, and; wounds of the head, ia which ho describ-ed-the method of procedure to to followed in tho case of a fractured skull. His direction was to cut away a piece of bono, 60 that tho pressure on tho brain might bo relieved. There are also records about tnis tiro© and later of a file being used for this purpose, which, at a time when anaesthetics were undreamed of, must havo been, to say the least, painful. According to Dr. T. Rico Holmes, the operation of removing pieces of bom was performed long beforo historic times. Tho effects on tho skull are easily seen after death, and are visible so long as tho bones are preserved. From inspection of certain skulls of the later stone ago in ancient Britain, Dr. Holmes has come to the conclusion that somo of these had undergone the operation, which must have been performed witli a stone implement.—"Loudon Standard."
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Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1479, 29 June 1912, Page 7
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210OLD SURGICAL OPERATIONS. Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1479, 29 June 1912, Page 7
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