TITLE   (repeat posting:  Best of 2018)

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

DESCRIPTION

What a fascinating article!  This article can be used for both the beginning chapter in the text book when discussing the history of Psychology or in later chapters recounting the history of Abnormal Psychology and early treatments.  The idea of trepanation or boring a hole in the skull as a treatment goes back thousands of years.  “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.”  The article discusses the history of trepanation but also examine the past 150 years wherein the medical community thought that it might be a treatment for migraine headaches.   This notion lasted well into the 20th century, and of course, was finally discounted.

SOURCE

Smithsonian.com, March 6, 2018, by Katherine Hall

LINK TO RESOURCE

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/drilling-holes-head-was-never-migraine-cure-180968370/

(Tiny URL)  http://tinyurl.com/ybtg8zod

CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

•What is trepanation?

•Why was it used?  And purportedly, what was it supposed to “cure”?

•Why was it believed that trepanation might be a “treatment” for migraine headaches?

•Explain how trepanation was viewed in the 20th century?