Trepanation Revisited

[Martyn White]

        I was tiying up some old files on a lazy Friday afternoon
when I came upon the following which i had downloaded from the list
about 6 months ago.   I thought I would post it again for anyone
who missed it:

Martyn

From: Gary Wingert <gary at z-code.com>
Subject: THE PEOPLE WITH HOLES IN THEIR HEADS
Sender: BOCL at spcvxa.spc.edu

In honor of The Brain Surgeons new effort, _Trepanation_,
I thought I'd forward an article about it.  Be forewarned,
those of you queasy-types, this is graphic!  You will
probably experience sympathy pains!

OBAside:  There actually used to be a mailing list similar
to this one, called TREPAN-D, at Brown University!

--- Forwarded mail from Linda Branagan

This is only for the *truly* sick.  I don't
suggest reading it immediately before a meal.

--Linda

--- Forwarded mail from Keith Bostic

To: /dev/null at python.bostic.com

>>From _Eccentric Lives & Peculiar Notions_ by John Michell.

                  THE PEOPLE WITH HOLES IN THEIR HEADS

Amanda Feilding lives in a charming flat looking over London's river
with her companion, Joey Mellen, and their infant son, Rock.  She is a
successful painter, and she and Joey have an art gallery in a
fashionable street of the King's Road.  Another of her talents is for
politics.  At the last two General Elections she stood for Parliament in
Chelsea, more than doubling her vote on the second occasion from 49 to
139.  It does not sound much, but the cause for which she stands is
unfamiliar and lacks obvious appeal.  Feilding and her voters demand
that trepanning operations be made freely available on the National
Health.  Trepanation means cutting a hole in your skull.

  The founder of the trepanation movement is a Dutch savant, Dr Bart
Hughes.  In 1962 he made a discovery which his followers proclaim as the
most significant in modern times.  One's state and degree of
consciousness, he realized, are related to the volume of blood in the
brain.  According to his theory of evolution, the adoption of an upright
stance brought certain benefits to the human race, but it caused the
flow of blood through the head to be limited by gravity, thus reducing
the range of human consciousness.  Certain parts of the brain ceased or
reduced their functions while others, particularly those parts relating
to speech and reasoning, became emphasized in compensation.  One can
redress the balance by a number of methods, such as standing on one's
head, jumping from a hot bath into a cold one, or the use of drugs; but
the wider consciousness thus obtained is only temporary.  Bart Hughes
shared the common goal of mystics and poets in all ages: he wanted to
achieve permanently the higher level of vision, which he associated with
an increased volume of blood in the capillaries of the brain.

  The higher state of mind he sought was that of childhood.  Babies are
born with skulls unsealed, and it is not until one is an adult that the
bony carapace is formed which completely encloses the membranes
surrounding the brain and inhibits their pulsations in repsonse to
heart-beats.  In consequence, the adult loses touch with the dreams,
imagination and intense perceptions of the child.  His mental balance
becomes upset by egoism and neuroses.  To cure these problems, first in
himself and then for the whole world, Dr Huges returned his cranium to
something like the condition of infancy by cutting out a small disc of
bone with an electric drill.  Experiencing immediate beneficial effects
from this operation, he began preaching to anyone who would listen to
the doctrine of trepanation.  By liberating his brain from its total
imprisonment in his skull, he claimed to have restored its pulsations,
increased the volume of blood in it and acquired a more complete,
satisfying state of consciousness than grown-up people normally enjoy.
The medical and legal authorities reacted to Huges's discovery with
horror and rewarded him with a spell in a Dutch lunatic asylum.

  Joseph Mellen met Bart Huges in 1965 in Ibiza and quickly became his
leading, or rather one and only, disciple.  Years later he wrote a book
called _Bore Hole_, the contents of which are summarized in its opening
sentence: 'This is the story of how I came to drill a hole in my skull
to get permanently high.'

  . . . (a few paragraphs detail Joseph Mellen's early experiments with
LSD, and how he finds out about Bart Huges.)

  The time came when Joey felt he had preached enough and that he now
had to act.  He did not agree with Holingshead that the third eye was
merely a figure of speech, believing in its physical attainment through
self-trepanation.  Support for this can be found in archaeology.  Skulls
of ancient people all over the world give evidence that their owners
were skillfully trepanned during their lifetimes, and many of these
appear to have been of noble or priestly castes.  The medical practice
of trepanation was continued up to the present century in treatment of
madness, the hole in the skull being seen as a way of relieving pressure
on the brain or letting out the devils that possessed it.  By his
scientific explanation of the reasons for the operation, Bart Huges had
removed it from the area of superstition, and Joey Mellen proposed to be
the second person to perform it on himself in the interest of
enlightenment.

  Bart had become a close friend of Amanda Feilding, and they went off
to Amsterdam together while Joey took care of Amanda's flat.  This was
the opportunity he had been waiting for to bore a hole in his head.

  The most gripping passages in _Bore Hole_ describe his various
attempts to complete the operation.  They are also extremely gruesome,
and those who lack medical curiosity would do well to read no further.
Yet to those who might contemplate trepanation for and by themselves,
Joey's experiences are a salutary warning.  It should be empahasized
that neither he, Bart nor Amanda has ever recommended people to follow
their example by performing their own operations.  For years they have
been looking for doctors who would understand their theories and would
agree to trepan volunteer patients as a form of therapy.  Strangely
enough, not one member of the medical profession has been converted.

  In a surgical store Joey found a trepan instrument, a kind of auger or
cork- screw designed to be worked by hand.  It was much cheaper and,
Joey felt, more sensitive than an electric drill.  Its main feature was
a metal spike, surrounded by a ring of saw-teeth.  The spike was meant
to be driven into the skull, holding the trepan steady until the
revolving saw made a groove, after which it could be retracted.  If all
went well, the saw-band should remove a disc of bone and expose the
brain.

  Joey's first attempt at self-trepanation was a fiasco.  He had no
previous medical experience, and the needles he had bought for
administering a local anaesthetic to the crown of his head proved to be
too thin and crumpled up or broke.  Next day he obtained some stouter
needles, took a tab of LSD to steady his nerves and set to in earnest.
First he made an incision to the bone, and then applied the trepan to
his bared skull.  But the first part of the operation, driving the spike
into the bone, was impossible to accomplish.  Joey described it as like
trying to uncork a bottle from the inside.  He realized he needed help
and telephoned Bart in Amsterdam, who promised he would come over and
assist at the next operation.  This plan was frustrated by the Home
Office, which listed Dr Huges as an undesirable visitor to Britain and
barred his entry.

  Amanda agreed to take his place.  Soon after her return to London she
helped Joey re-open the wound in his head and, by pressing the trepan
with all her might against his skull, managed to get the spike to take
hold and the saw- teeth to bite.  Joey then took over at cranking the
saw.  Once again he had swallowed some LSD.  After a long period of
sawing, just as he was about to break through, he suddenly fainted.
Amanda called an ambulance and he was taken to hospital, where horrified
doctors told him that he was lucky to be alive and that if he had
drilled a fraction of an inch further he would have killed himself.

  The psychiatrists took a particular interest in his case, and a group
of them arranged to examine him.  Before this could be done, he had to
appear in court on a charge of possessing a small amount of cannabis.
The magistrate demanded another psychiatrist's report and demanded him
for a week in prison.

  There followed a period of embarrassment as the rumour went round
London that Joey Mellen had trepanned himself, whereas in fact he had
failed to do so.  As soon as possible, therefore, he prepared for a
third attempt.  Proceeding as before, but now with the benefit of
experience, he soon found the groove from the previous operation and
began to saw through the sliver of bone separating him from
enlightenment or, as the doctors had predicted, instant death.  What
followed is best quoted from _Bore Hole_.

  'After some time there was an ominous sounding schlurp and the sound
of bubbling.  I drew the trepan out and the gurgling continued.  It
sounded like air bubbles running under the skull as they were pressed
out.  I looked at the trepan and there was a bit of bone in it.  At
last!  On closer inspection I saw that the disc of bone was much deeper
on one side than on the other. Obviously the trepan had not been
straight and had gone through at one point only, then the piece of bone
had snapped off and come out.  I was reluctant to start drilling again
for fear of damaging the brain membranes with the deeper part while I
was cutting through the rest or of breaking off a splinter.  If only I
had an electric drill it would have been so much simpler.  Amanda was
sure I was through.  There seemed no other explanation for the
schlurping noises I decided to call it a day.  At the time I thought
that any hole would do, no matter what size.  I bandaged up my head and
cleared away the mess.'

  There was still doubt in his mind as to whether he had really broken
through and, if so, whether the hole was big enough to restore pulsation
to his brain.  The operation had left him with a feeling of wellbeing,
but he realized that it could simply be from relief at having ended it.
To put the matter beyond doubt, he decided to bore another hole at a new
spot just above the hairline, this time using an electric drill.  In the
spring of 1970, Amanda was in America and Joey did the operation alone.
He applied the drill to his forehead, but after half and hour's work the
electric cable burnt out.  Once again he was frustrated.  An engineer in
the flat below him was able to repair the instrument and next day he set
out to finish the job. 'This time I was not in any doubt.  The drill
head went at least an inch deep through the hole.  A great gush of blood
followed my withdrawal of the drill.  In the mirror I could see the
blood in the hole rising and falling with the pulsation of the brain.'

  The result was all he had hoped for.  During the next four hours he
felt his spirits rising higher until he reached a state of freedom and
serenity which he claims, has been with him ever since.

  For some time now he had been sharing a flat with Amanda, and when she
came back from America she immediately noticed the change in him.  This
encouraged her to join him on the mental plane by doing her own
trepanation.  The operation was carefully recorded.  She had obtained a
cine-camera, and Joey stood by, filming, as she attacked her head with
an electric drill.  The film shows her carefully at work, dressed in a
blood-spattered white robe.  She shaves her head, makes an incision in
her head with a scalpel and calmly starts drilling.  Blood spurts as she
penetrates the skull.  She lays aside the drill and with a triumphant
smile advances towards Joey and the camera.

  Ever since, Joey and amanda have lived and worked together in harmony.
>>From the business of buying old prints to colour and resell, they have
progressed to ownership of the Pigeonhole Gallery and seem reasonably
prosperous.  They have also started a family.  There is nothing
apparently abnormal about them, and many of their old friends agree in
finding them even more pleasant and contented since their operations.
There is plenty of leisure in their lives, mingled with the kind of
activities they most enjoy.  These of course include talking and writing
about trepanation.  They have lectured widely in Europe and America to
groups of doctors and other interested people, showing the film of
Amanda's self-operation, entitled _Heartbeat in the Brain_.  It is
generally received with awe, the sight of blood often causing people to
faint.  At one showing in London a film critic described the audience
'dropping off their seats one by one like ripe plums'.  Yet it was not
designed to be gruesome.  The soundtrack is of soothing music, and the
surgical scenes alternate with some delightful motion studies of
Amanda's pet pigeon, Birdie, as a symbol of peace and wisdom."