No, Getting a Hole Drilled in Your Head Was Never a Migraine Cure

[rangerrebew]

No, Getting a Hole Drilled in Your Head Was Never a Migraine Cure
The ancient and controversial procedure was used for a slew of reasons, but to ‘let the headache out’ was not one of them
 
By Katherine Foxhall, The Conversation
 
March 6, 2018
 

Trepanation—the technique of removing bone from the skull by scraping, sawing, drilling or chiselling—has long fascinated those interested in the darker side of medical history. One stock tale is that trepanning is one of the most ancient treatments for migraines. As I study the history of the migraine, it certainly has always caught my attention.

The word trepanation comes from the Greek trypanon, meaning a borer. The earliest known trepanned skulls date from around 10,000 BCE, and come from North Africa. There are trepanation accounts in the Hippocratic texts (5th century BCE), when it was used in cases of fracture, epilepsy or paralysis, and in the second century CE Galen wrote of his experiments with trepanation on animals in his clinical studies.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/drilling-holes-head-was-never-migraine-cure-180968370/#KzIkGBruhMHDbBfq.99
 

[thackney]

Back when I used to have migraines, I remember reading about a guy who had killed himself drilling a hole into his head trying to relieve migraine pain.

Sad to say, having way too much experience with migraines, my first thought was: "I wonder if it helped, before he died."

[RoosGirl]

Back when I used to have migraines, I remember reading about a guy who had killed himself drilling a hole into his head trying to relieve migraine pain.

Sad to say, having way too much experience with migraines, my first thought was: "I wonder if it helped, before he died."

No doubt.  In the midst of a migraine, drilling a hole in your head with hopes to relieve the pain can seem like a pretty good idea.