The first known neurosurgery in Greece took place around 1900 BC in the area of Delphi. This discovery was made by Greek scientists who examined the skull of a man from the area of Kirra in Fokida.
According to their research, published in the journal World Neurosurgery, the man lived for a few months or a year after the surgery until he finally died at the age of 30 to 35.
Mr Manolis I. Papagrigorakis, an orthodontist and assistant professor at the University of Athens, is an expert in paleopathology. When the archaeologist Despina Skorda showed him the skull, he noticed a hole in the right temporal bone.
The possibility that this hole was from a drilling operation crossed his mind, because if it was a fatal arrow wound, "the skull would have fractures", he says. Skull surgery with drilling, as scientific research has shown, was performed much earlier in other parts of the world, such as France, India, the cultures of Central America.
However, the first scientific description of drilling belongs to Hippocrates, who recommends it for the treatment of head injuries and especially skull fractures.
At Delphi, during the Middle Bronze Age, vapours of gases rising from the ground suggested the area as an ideal place for such an operation.
Long operation
"The patient had to be in a state of intoxication, analgesia, and at that time, as far as we know, there was no knowledge of preparing a substance that causes anaesthesia," says Mr M Papagrigorakis, head of the research team. It is therefore very likely that the operation took place near a geological formation from which vapours were emitted.
The Greek scientists believe that the man who underwent the operation probably suffered from a form of epilepsy. Opening a hole in the skull seemed, in the eyes of the therapists, to be the ideal solution to rid patients of "evil spirits". The operation opened, in their belief, a window to escape from the head.
Greek experts examined the skull on a CT scan to study the structure of the bone where the surgery was performed. The hole had an oval shape measuring 8 by 7.5 mm and its edges were curved, indicating that the healing process had begun after the operation.
It was definitely a long operation and painful for the patient, despite the state of intoxication he was in. The morphology of the shape of the hole, makes experts believe that the surgery was performed by rubbing on the skull some stone tool, probably.
In this way, the skull was pierced and was healed after. Scientists can not say for sure what kind of diseases (except epilepsy) the therapists tried to cure with the method of drilling.
