http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrepanationAlthough considered today to be pseudoscience, the practice of trepanation for other purported medical benefits continues. The most prominent explanation for these benefits is offered by Dutchman Bart Huges (alternatively spelled Bart Hughes). He is sometimes called Dr. Bart Hughes although he did not complete his medical degree. Hughes claims that trepanation increases "brain blood volume" and thereby enhances cerebral metabolism in a manner similar to cerebral vasodilators such as ginkgo biloba. No published results have supported these claims.
Other modern practitioners of trepanation claim that it holds other medical benefits, such as a treatment for depression or other psychological ailments. In 2000, two men from Cedar City, Utah were prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license after they performed a trepanation on an English woman to treat her chronic fatigue syndrome and depression.[10]
However, individuals may practice non-emergency trepanation for psychic purposes. A prominent proponent of the modern view is Peter Halvorson, who drilled a hole in the front of his own skull to increase "brain blood volume".
n a chapter of his book, Eccentric Lives & Peculiar Notions, John Michell describes a British group that advocates self-trepanation to allow the brain access to more space and oxygen. The chapter is called "The People With Holes in their Heads". Michell cites Bart Huges as pioneered the idea of trepanation specifically his 1962 monograph, Homo Sapiens Correctus, as most cited by advocates of self-trepanation. Among other arguments, he contends that children have a higher state of consciousness and since children's skulls are not fully closed one can return to an earlier, childlike state of consciousness by self-trepanation. Further, by allowing the brain to freely pulsate Huges argues that a number of benefits will accrue.
Michell quotes a book called Bore Hole written by Joey Mellen. At the time the passage below was written, Joey and his partner, Amanda Feilding, had made two previous attempts at trepanning Mellen. The second attempt ended up placing Mellen in the hospital, where he was reprimanded severely and sent for psychiatric evaluation. After he returned home, Mellen decided to try again. He describes his third attempt at self-trepanation:
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!
Amanda Feilding also performed a self-trepanation with a drill, while her partner Joey Mellen filmed the operation, in the film titled Heartbeat in the Brain. The film has since been lost. Portions of the film can be seen, however, in the documentary A Hole in the Head.
¡Increible!
