Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Trepanation

Episode Date: June 21, 2013

Welcome to Sawbones, where Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin McElroy take you on a whimsical tour of the dumb ways in which we've tried to fix people. This week: We put a hole in your head. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Alright, Tommy is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with the toy and that's lost it out. We were shot through the broken glass and had ourselves hot like a rum. Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Wow! Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. This is the new program for myself, Justin Tyler McAroy. That's my new thing, by the way.

You're gonna go with your middle name now? JT, Matt. No. No. No. That's not okay. Justin McAroy, it's a pleasure to be with you and I'd like to introduce you to my lovely wife Sydney. Well, I think for these purposes, should I be, should I be doctor Sydney? Dr. Sydney McAroy, official medical doctor. That's right, but not operating in any official capacity at this time. Yeah, we should know. No official doctoring is being performed. There is no official medical advice being given. Right. We should clarify that while Cine is a medical practitioner, nothing we will ever say will

be actionable medical advice. You can tell because the moment that I take a sip of beer, I cease to be an actual medical doctor and I'm more of like a A George Clooney doctor. Okay. I got it. So at that moment at that exact moment. I'm dashing. I'm charming and everything I say is bold Already you really attracted to me right now. I'm terribly attracted to you Just do you want to remind you Sydney that we don't curse on the show. I screwed it up already. I am going to beep that out. That's no problem. I know how to beep. I have to make it through an entire show without using profanity. Yes, I'm sorry. Those are the rules. This is a show for kids and adults alike. What is this double dare?

No, it's a show about the history of medicine or at least the stuff that we tried and did not work out. So well, Cindy, what is the, what are we talking about this week? Well, Justin, I thought that we would get started with something really exciting when it comes to medical practice. Treponation. Treponation Trepination? That does sound exciting.

Well, it's exciting for the people who practice it, but I don't know that it was particularly exciting for anybody who had it performed. Now, what is trepination? Well, I'll give you a clue. Okay. It comes from a Greek word. Oh, good.

That's extremely helpful for me. Well, I was gonna tell you the Greek word. Okay. Trepon. So tell you the Greek word. Okay. Trippin' on. So now you get it, right? Obviously, that means a two-bore. Oh, so you should be familiar with right? Just bring it to the level of yucks, right?

You're right. No, like a whole, like to bore a hole. You know, like, like, bore a hole in something. Oh, okay, I got you. All right, I'm with you now. Uh, where am I going to put a hole? Whoa, hey, hey, Doc, whoa, whoa, hey. There, I can't think of literally no, I'm sitting here trying to think of places.

There's no place I want to put a hole. There might not be any place you wanted to put a hole, but for 7,000 years, humans have been wanting to put holes in their heads. No, come on. A certain trepidation is the process of essentially putting a hole in your skull. Okay. Sydney, when I was a young man,

just a taught really I I Was pitching a fit because I had to take a nap and when I When I was flailing about like tauts do I Slam my head onto the windowsill and there was blood everywhere and I had to get it stapled So is it like that? Well Justin, not at all. I was very close though. I mean basically I have a basic functional understanding of this medical procedure, right? Well no because what I would imagine is that when you say you put a hole in your head you mean that you Tor the skin of your scalp which overlies your skull which of course is the bone right right?

You didn't actually break your skull. It felt like I broke my skull. You don't remember that it was extremely painful Sydney. I'm no memory of that. You're making this I. I'm frankly hurt. You brought it up. It was an extremely painful memory. The reason that I know you didn't actually fracture your skulls that they use staples to put it back together. Right. They did use staples to put it back together. Right. And so it wasn't your skull. Not technically my skull. No, it felt like my, you can acknowledge it. You can overline your skull. You can acknowledge it felt like my skull broke. Well, I can acknowledge that because I know for a fact that the the skin is probably more painful than the skull bone itself fracturing, so make sense. Cause nerves? Yes, because of nerves. Okay, so tell me what is actual medical trepid that's a loaded Okay, what's interesting is about the history of trepination is that or trepination with a pH if you prefer I don't know what I don't I don't really care Is that when we talk about the history what we're really talking about is the history of the discovery?

Oh trepination. How do you mean? Well, if you were to ask me what exactly was the first moment when a human said, hey, I think I need to put a hole in your head in order to make you feel better, I don't know because we really don't understand why primitive people practice this. We just know that they did and then we've put it together through a lot of context clues. Okay. Which is really good to science. I think instead of starting 7,000 years ago when we know people were practicing trepination, I think we should start in 1685. Take me back, said, put me in the way back machine that we own.

So in 1685, there were people digging in France, in France, just digging in the ground. They were making that hole where they put all the bodies, right? Humor me. Yes, they were digging a hole to put lots of bodies. What, where were the bodies coming from? Like in the dead people would die in France, what they do, they don't have cemeteries, so they put everybody in catacombs.

So they put everybody in catacombs, and as they're, yes, that's sure. and they're digging and give me a French guy accent Okay, yeah, but you're okay. You're not a French skunk. You're a French guy who's who's digging already She is so hard and so you're digging you're in you're in the Neolithic burial site. Oh this Neolithic burial of Incessime says I'm beautiful Beautiful is a sign incessime I'm guessing at the pronunciation Me I'm not I'm from there. I'm a grandfather

Spondy not you're sticking and you stumble across Whoa, huh come I my, my baguette to struck something. Why are you digging with the baguette? I'm digging with a baguette. I have fashioned it into a shovel. And you find a human skull. Oh, no.

Not that. As you pick up this human skull, met the most foul. With the tip of your baguette. The ash from your cigarette that inevitably is dangling from your Your mouth I wish I could greet I am addicted to the little bitches Through a hole in the skull That you find

In the top of the skull there's a hole What why was there a hole? Well, you don't know okay? 1685 you don't know anything I was my bad guy You're really not sure okay, so I'm trying to get into this character so what you don't know why okay So there's a whole perfectly round hole these these on me study I will call poro No, you really don't tell anybody. I don't tell Paro.

Okay. You make note of it in terms of like, you tell your friends, my log. You tell your friends about it. Diadari, that's not interesting happened today. You maybe like, I don't know, you call, there's not curators at the time. You call your buddy who like, I don't know, you call, there's not curators at the time. You call your buddy who like, that's like a reason. It reads, and writes it down,

is like, this is crazy, Pierre found a skull, that's like, it was hole in it. Is this brainy day, it's your friend Pierre. Because that's it, that's it. 1685, they find a skull with a hole in it and basically disregard it. Why? Because they don't really understand it.

They figured it was a trauma. It was some weird, somebody got a spear through their head and died. The only reason we even know that this happened is because of what happened in 1816. No, what happened in 1816? So they're still digging in France. All of these discoveries are in France.

Now that is not the place where treponation necessarily originated. It's just where we found out about it. Okay. So they're digging again in a neolithic burial pit and they find another skull with a hole in it. That's weird. Not the holes we expect, you know, for the eyes

and the mouth and the nose. Right, I gathered. An extra one. Yeah. A bonus hole. What is with these holes? There are still any front and two smaller ones, and the Navy going to the bathroom.

So at this point, the scientists start looking at this anthropologist and scientists start examining this skull and decide that a hole was intentionally put in this skull. Well, now why would they decide that? Because it looks intentional. Okay. Because it's round.

It's perfectly round. It's not something that just happens. Okay. So they decide there must be a reason. But they also erroneously decide that this was done after death. Oh, okay. But for some reason, after this person died, a whole was probably drilled in the skull. Okay.

And again, they just kind of put it to rest. They just decided, well, one of life's little mysteries. Right. Except for Ephraim, George Squire. I knew I could count on him. Yes, Ephraim. Ephraim. I knew I could count on him. Yes, that from So and not too long after the that 1816 Discovery about probably about 50 years later, okay

So he was he was a rich guy An anthropologist a diplomat a lover a fighter a lover a fighter a Midnight toker I don't know. Sure. He was touring Peru. And he was hanging out at this rich Peruvian lady's house. Okay. Is she beautiful? She was beautiful. Mysterious, She was beautiful. Mysterious and charming and exotic and she had a collection of skulls. So okay, I like this. She was a little freaky. I like that.

I like that. And I do. And he was touring her home and noticed that among her collection of- Are we still in France? No, we're in Peru now. Peru. We have now. Peru. We have moved to Peru. I don't do Peruvian.

Go on. Among her collection of artifacts, you know, like spearheads and fossils and pots and all the usual stuff, there's a skull. And what is in this skull? Jello. A whole. A whole? Jello?

Did you say Jello? I thought you were using the jello in. Okay. A whole. There, Jello. Did you say Jello? He said, but Jello. Okay. Oh, there's a hole. I should have guessed a hole. And Ephraim is the first one to really look at this and say, like, okay, what is going on? Why are all these, why are there all these skulls with holes in them?

But nobody knows. No. So he asks this lady, I have to imagine there's a scenario. I mean If you read about it, he just said hey, can I take this skull? I think it's special and she said yeah Go for it, man. I Like to think that he seduced her Okay, I like this right so like they're in the middle. They're like post-coid is and he's like I'm gonna go out and smoke whatever people in Peru smoke as cigarettes.

Weed. I'm gonna go smoke some weed outside. I don't, that doesn't sound very, stay here. Very classy or sexy? I've made you, I'm gonna smoke some oregano. I'm gonna smoke. I'm gonna smoke the finest Thai basil one can grow.

I'm gonna smoke some Thai basil outside. Don't follow me. You wouldn't want to anyway. It has literally no second-tripic effects. And it really hurts your lungs. And it hurts your lungs and it's tasteless. Hey kids, don't smoke. Don't smoke.

Anything. Oregano, basil, sage, rosemary. The more delicious it sounds, that the less good it is for you. So he steals this skull. It's very exciting us to leave a bag of sand that weighs approximately the same amount on her pedestal, so her traps don't trigger.

He takes a dead acroid, who makes the greatest vodka that's ever been made here. I don't think that's actually accurate. Okay. Give me the actual true thing that really genuinely happened. What really happened is that he took this skull back to the US and he presented it to the New York Academy of Medicine. Okay.

And he said, hey, doctors, look at this. Look at this, look at this hole. Look at this. What do you think was up with this guy? Why is there a yellow all over it? Everybody said, you know what? They all looked at it and probably made a lot of expressions and like scratch their chins a lot

and twirled their moustaches. And finally, I'll decide that this is definitely a surgical procedure. They're just guessing, right? They're just guessing. Definitely. You can tell this was a surgical procedure. However, we still think that it wasn't done until

after the person died, so we have no idea why we're concerned with this. The reason that everybody was so excited about this is that it indicated at the time the common belief was that humans used to be really stupid. Right. And that there was no way that an ancient culture could have come up with some kind of surgical procedure, right? Right. If they were drilling into a skull, it was because they were dead and they were doing something weird and ritualistic and gross and that had no medical benefit. So to physicians of the time, the idea that maybe they were doing something that had like a logical basis, or at least what they thought was a logical basis, was completely absurd. So they, so you're saying that the idea that it was a medical procedure did not even enter their possibility sphere because they didn't think that people in olden times

even did anything medical. Exactly. Because it would, it would necessitate that they had some kind of diagnosis that they would follow. Okay, okay, okay. So, and I should preface this with- And they thought that they just used magic basically. Right, right, and I should preface this with the idea that sometimes the skull is fractured, The skull is fractured so that someone breaks their skull. It damages the tissues beneath, which calls the swelling. And then the swelling could be dangerous, even fatal to the person. That had already been somewhat established.

So they thought if they found a skull that was already broken and then had a hole in it the thought process was Oh, okay, well they broke their skull their brain swelled So they tried to take a piece out to relieve the pressure So this was a skull that wasn't broken and had a hole in it So none of this made sense this would insinuate that an ancient culture was able to Diagnose some kind of brain process culture was able to diagnose some kind of brain process without any labs or tests or really any instruments,

whatsoever or really any knowledge of what was going on. So this was total, this blew their minds. Okay. Ephraim was the only one who had any faith. And the American camera there from the New York Academy of Medicine said, dude, yes, it's a hole in a skull. We get it. It's it's weird But like you know ancient dudes were weird and they drilled a hole in a skull and we're really not interested Take your weird Peruvian skull Back to your mistress and get out of here, okay, and he said

Screw you guys. I'm going to Paris To meet with Paul Broca. That's right, I said Paul Broca. I know, it's really exciting isn't it? Who's Paul? Don't get too excited. Paul Broca. Who is Paul Broca? A is Paul Broca?

A Broca's area? Broca's aphasia? What do you mean who is Paul Broca? All right, you're just jerking my chain now. Okay, so what did Paul Broca do? Paul Broca was many things. He was an anthropologist indeed. He was a surgeon.

He was an anthropologist indeed. He was a surgeon. He was a scientist. He studied neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. And he is known to this day by medical students and physicians across the country as the reason that we all know about Broca's area of the brain. Broca's area of the brain is theca's area of the brain is the third gyress of the left frontal lobe. Oh, okay. Now what is a gyress? It's a little, it's like a convolution, it's a crease, it's a wrinkle.

Okay. The third wrinkle of the left frontal lobe. Okay. So the left part of the brain. And that's known as Broca's joint. Next to the lateral sulcus. Broca's joint. Is that what it's called? Broca's area that's known as Broca's joint. Next to the lateral sulcus. Broca's joint. Is that what it's called?

Broca's area. It works. Broca's place. Yeah, it's where language is. Oh, okay. It's our language center. And Broca's is great. So when somebody has Broca's aphasia, for instance, they can understand everything you

say and they want to respond to it, but they can't form language. Interesting. They can't, language. Interesting. They can't, their brain tells their mouth and their, you know, lips and their tongue how to work and it won't happen. So what did Broke make at the skull? Okay, so Broke said, dude, this was done while this guy was totally alive. How could Broke everybody's just guessing?

Because bones still grow after, I mean, as long as you're still alive, bone keeps growing even after a surgical procedure. So you can tell if you make a hole in the skull and the person keeps living, you can see bone growth. You can see that. Okay. So he could tell that this was done while the guy was still alive. So he was the first one to say, hey, these ancient dudes were performing some kind of surgical procedure. He actually said that what astonishes him, this is a quote from Paul Broker that I appreciated, is not the boldness of the operation.

How do you choose your favorite broca code though? Mm-hmm. I heard that sarcasm. What astonishes me is not the boldness of the operation as ignorance is often the mother of boldness. So anyway, at this point, they published a paper, broke a published a paper telling everybody of his findings and by 1867, trepination was everywhere.

Everybody was finding, they were just digging up skulls left or right, and what was surprising is that there were a lot of skulls and skeletons that had already been found that had holes in them. It's just nobody had really noticed or paid attention. Somehow everybody had just refused to acknowledge that there were all of these dead guys with holes in their heads and what the hell was this all heck was this all about? I think hell's over. I don't know, you don't, you censored me.

I would never. So we start discovering basically all of these different skulls with holes that well not even discovering just fucking freaking Noticent sorry. Okay, that's not okay. That just noticing that there are skulls with holes in the mouth of sudden now Here's the thing before we get all weird Okay, cuz things are about to get weird. I've realized that I keep talking about drilling a hole in people's heads. Yeah, can you keep it like not scary though? I'm really, I just ate. I'd usually, I'd like to go into a really detailed description of the whatever medical thing I'm talking about, but with trepination, it's pretty straightforward. What's that?

Initially, people just used a hard piece of stone, like obsidian or flint, and they would just scrape away bone until there was a hole there. No, that sounds very pleasant. It was an instrument called a toomy to you, am I a toomy, and they would just scrape away at the bone. Usually they would use kind of a crisscross pattern until they had hacked away enough and removed the piece of bone. Pretty simple. Eventually, they developed drilling and chiseling tools, like handheld tools that they could use to remove the piece of bone. And it was usually a circle.

They would chip away in a circle until they had created enough little teeny perforations. Okay. Take the piece out. They're the perforated, yeah. Yeah. And then finally in the medieval times, they had mechanical drills.

Nowadays, you would use an electric drill for this procedure. Oh, good. Yeah, that's something much more pleasant. It could be anywhere from a few centimeters to half the skull, and most of them around with our skull. Half the skull. She's it. It's usually done in the parietal bone.

There are just several bones in the skull. It's all made up. It's in the side front part here. Do you see where I'm pointing? Yeah, they can see that. They can see that at home too. Not over here because that's your temporal bone. Then in the back, there's the occipital bone and then the frontal bone.

In the side, that's usually where it was, there's a frontal bone. So in the side that's usually where was the pridele bone. Let's talk about because at this point obviously scientists, doctors, anthropologists were wondering why why did people do this, right? We know that the only good reason to put a hole in the head is if they're swelling around the brain. If the brain is swollen and it keeps just swelling and mashing up against the sides of the skull, it's going to get damaged and you can die that way. So that was an obvious idea. Like I mentioned earlier, that people hit their head, broke their skull, and so they drilled

another hole to relieve pressure. That was an obvious reason. What we begin to theorize is that they also did it for things like, oh, things that we all treated poorly back in the day, headaches, seizures, the idea that we used to treat possession with a hole in the head was probably pretty valid. I mean, how else would you get rid of the evil spirits, right?

But this is all theorizing, right? I mean, we don't have any heart proof. No cave paintings through. Most of our ideas about why we did trepination are really just that, their ideas. I mean, we were pretty sure that people did it for actual skull fractures, so to relieve pressure on the brain.

But as far as the other medical indications, we really don't know. We think mental illness was treated with this a lot. But again, these are all just theories. And it probably would have just been an interesting historical point if it weren't for one weirdo. Is it that Paul guy again?

No, it's not that Paul guy. Are you calling Paul Broca a weirdo? No, I mean not of course I would never besmirch the good name of Paul Broca. I've been a fan of his for minutes No, I'm talking about Dr. Bart Hughes Dr. Bart Hughes. I like that. That's a dashing name Dr. Dr. Bart Hughes. I like that. That's a dashing name. Dr. Dr. Bart was interested in ways to expand his consciousness. And could you interpret that for everyone, Justin? What does that mean if you are interested in ways to expand your consciousness? Love drugs.

Dr. Bart loved drugs. So he was looking for ways to explore the limits of the human psyche and the human intellectual potential. He began studying these, you know, skulls with holes in them and the idea of trepination and he was fascinated by it. He really thought that maybe these ancient people were on to something and he began to come up with the concept of blood brain volume. Blood brain volume. I say that as if it's one word because it is written as one word in his in his book blood Blood Brain Volume. Okay. Blood Brain Volume.

So the idea was that we could increase the thought processes and the metabolism of the brain if we increase blood flow. That makes sense, right? Like blood carries oxygen to our cells. I would have literally no eye-on-eye. And if we can get more blood to our brain, we're carrying more oxygen to ourselves, which will make them work faster and better. And we'll be, I don't know, smarter, happier, more enlightened,

capable of moving objects with our head. There is no spoon. I don't know. Better wrapping. Much better wrapping. That's really what Dr. Bart was after was the perfect wrapper. So he thought he could make the perfect wrapper. So this is I'd like to can I quote again? I would like to quote Dr. Bart as to how he kind of stumbled on to this concept. I met someone who used to stand on his head for considerable periods of time.

When I asked him why he did it, he said it got him high. Later, I was given some mescaline. And it was then that I got my first. It was then that I got my first clear picture of the mechanism realizing that it was the increase in the volume of brain blood, one word, that gave the expanded consciousness. Oh, masculine. What can't you do? Thank you, masculine. Thank you, you do? Thank you, masculine.

Thank you, masculine, for all you've given to us. So what he went on to really theorize is that, okay, Justin, yes. Have you ever seen a baby? Yes. You know about the soft spot. Indeed I do. So what is the soft spot?

That's a spot where babies are are when I made a baby, he didn't finish it. Okay, so you don't know what the soft spot is. May I do not? Okay, so in the top of a baby's head, well, I mean in our heads, when we were babies too, yeah, any head. There is an area where the bones of the skull,

the skull is not one solid bone, okay? It's several bones fusing together. Okay, but when we're babies, there are areas where they haven't fully fused together yet And that's that's purposeful. It's to allow room for brain growth as we age and then eventually all the bones fused together. I heard no There is a spot or there are a couple of spots actually, where the bones haven't fused together yet, one where babies, and those are what we call the quote unquote soft spots, or fontanelles is the medical term for them. So you'll see if you take your babies, if you have children, or if you've stolen someone's

children, give them back. But first. But if you're not going to give them back, take them to a doctor. But do give them back. You'll notice that your pediatrician or family physician will check their soft spot to notice how big it is, has it fused yet, is it too early, is it too late, does it feel like the bones are overlapping, so that's something that we do frequently. Anyway the point is the soft spot was already well known and Dr. Bart theorized that as babies the reason we were happy and joyful and innocent and naive is because of the soft spot. The bones of our skull weren't fused yet. So we had room for open mindedness and enlightenment.

So that... no I'm not... I'm sort of an amateur doctor. more of a sort of a semi-pro physician really through my studies in the books. Sure. That sounds like bullshit to me. Like just my uninformed opinion, that sounds like bullshit. Well, it is. But Dr. Bart really believed this. He really thought that the problem with,

as we become adults, our Skullbund's fused and we are limited in the way we can see the world. So we become cynical and bitter and angry and mundane. So what was his solution for all this? To practice trepination and recreate the font now that we once had. Oh, Jesus Jesus so to put a hole in your head like that doesn't even make like That doesn't even make why would nature make us so that our heads don't

Close right me like he he based this on a theory and I won't get into all of it because I read it And I no matter how many times I read it. I still can't understand. It doesn't make any sense. But basically what I was trying to say is that it's too technical. No, because it's stupid is that we evolved too quickly. We evolved so quickly and I'm now our skulls closing they're not supposed to. And so this is a mistake not evolution. So we've got to drill a mistake, not evolution. So we've got to drill a hole in our heads. He believed this so strongly, though, you got to give the guy some credit. He believed it so strongly that he drilled a hole in his head to prove it.

Nice. And then he was institutionalized. No. Yes. Not that guy whose name I forgot. How could this fake before him? Dr. Bart spent a few years in a psychiatric hospital because he drilled a hole in his own head.

Although he says that the moment he drilled that hole in his head, he became enlightened, that he understood the world in a way that he never had before. And dizzy. I would say blood loss or meningitis is possible reasons for this, but none of these things resolve,

none of these things resulted. He really just, he drilled a hole in his head and he was put in a psych hospital. Okay. When he got out though, there was a whole new thing out there for him to discover. What was that? Well, that was LSD.

Ah, all right. So he got out of the psych hospital. I don't know He found some LSD. I guess it was the 60s. It was everywhere. Yeah, it was just hanging off of lamppost He wanted to move it in the neighborhood. You get a sample of tide and you get some LSD He picked up some LSD and he started hanging out with a guy named Joseph Melon. He did some LSD, he gave Joseph Melon some LSD and then convinced Joseph Melon also to drill a hole in his head. So he's got a whole kind of team now.

Good old Joey was thrilled with the results felt enlightened and happy like never before. So much so that he called up his lady love. Amanda Fielding will call her Mandy and said, Hey, what's Hey, Mandy. Hey, Mandy. It's me. It's Joey. I had something special in mind for three year anniversary. Something real nice. Something real tender. I know you're expecting flowers, chocolates, diamond maybe. Girl you know how you're always saying I need to work harder to get inside your head. Well listen, I got it. And I want to put it on film. I'm gonna what wait what Joseph melon and Dr. Bart Drill the hole in Amanda Fielding's head and put it on film I said not on the tube. How's that not on the tube? I don't know. I want to see this right now

I don't have another tube. It might be on YouTube. I didn't look Sydney. Do we do this today? Is this is a medical procedure with any relevance? Now this is, yes, but it's not, we don't call it trepination. We call it a craniotomy. Craniotomy. We perform a craniotomy. There are two real scenarios where this is standard. So first of all, if you're going to have surgery on your brain, we're going to take a piece of your skull up to get to it.

I think that's pretty self-explanatory. Right? I do think it's interesting that if we have to do brain surgery, your neurosurgeon will remove a piece of your skull and sometimes if this piece of skull has to stay out for a while because it's normal after a surgical procedure to have some swelling. So the brain could swell and you don't want to put the skull back and then have the brain swell and smash up against the side of the skull. I mean I think about it really

basically. Smashers up against the side of the skull and it gets damaged. That's bad. So they take the piece of skull and you know where they put it. Where? In your abdomen. Oh nice. It keeps it there. I'll nice and warm and safe until they ready to put it back. I was, I thought you were going to say but really fun. I thought you were going to say but. Why would I say but? You just seem like you just put this on your butt. No, you put it in your abdomen. But maybe you're like your, some people try the butt and they should. Yeah, no. Okay. Okay. So that's one, so that's a craniotomy for a surgical procedure. We also in an emergency situation, so let's

say that you fall and hit your head really hard on something. Yeah, you might get some bleeding inside your skull. It could be, so the dura is like this thin layer of tissue, tardy tissue, it's thin, but it's tough, and it lines lines the brain and you might get blood on the outside of it Epidural or under it subdural either way It can be a bad situation Sometimes if there's enough blood collecting especially outside an epidural Blood collection we have to drill a hole in the skull to let out the pressure, to save your brain, to keep your brain from getting my precious precious instrument.

But all that blood. Okay, so there's some legitimacy. So there is a scenario in which you might see, I mean, I mean, of course, you probably have seen this on ER or, I don't know, some other kind of medical show where you see a doctor take a drill to a patient's head in an emergency situation and drill a hole, a burr hole, to release the blood and the pressure and save the brain tissue. Now this is rare. Sure.

And this is usually following a trauma and this don't know, pseudo-scientific reasons. I think that might be a nice way of putting it. A kind way of putting it. Right now, trepination is still being studied as a legitimate medical procedure to increase Dr. Bart's brain blood volume. And increase our consciousness and awareness, our intellectual processes. Expand our brain room. Yeah. I want to try it. No, we're not going to try it. I want to try. The problem right now is that it's just like with anything, right? I'm just going to let me do the one thing that I want to do. The problem right now is that it's just like with anything, right? So there's a-

I'm so glad to meet you. Do the one thing that I want to do more than anything in the world is the main problem. So there's an international trepidation advocacy. All I want in here is pretending like I don't want it. So you can go to trepidation.org and find out about it. I can. You can. You're saying I should.

No, I'm not saying you should. You're saying tomorrow at work, I should find out about it and that I should do it I should find out about it maybe do it and maybe you should never do it But there is a website then it's by the international Treponation advocacy group which is real that's itag and What they're saying is that doctors don't want you to know the advantages of treponation Because it can make you smarter. I knew it.

It can make you enlightened. You are afraid of me surpassing you. That's right. I don't want you to be too clever with that hole in your head. You're afraid that I'll start beating you to a fellow. Right. They claim at some of the websites that I looked at, the advocacy websites, that I am worried as a physician that it would endanger my medical practice.

Because everybody'd be too... Everybody'd be so freaking smart. You wouldn't need me anymore. I love that. I like to know everything and I can't handle it if everybody's got holes in their heads and their geniuses. You're trying to limit the populations, and I heard like, say, I'm trying to limit you.

Why are you trying? I've got that pill that Bradley Cooper took, and I'm keeping it from you all. You can't have it. The pill that Bradley Cooper took was trepidation. That doesn't, he didn't have a lot of those pills. He didn't have a lot of those pills. He got a hole in his head,

and he had to get a new one every day. Thank you so much for listening to our show, Saw Bones. We sure hope you had enjoyed it. If you could just take a moment, if you enjoyed the program, first off, maybe tweet about it. Just get out there and share it, share it with the world.

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It's more about our company. I know. we really appreciate it I don't feel worthy so thank you. I hope you'll check out all the other programs on maximum fun like Wambam Power one bad mother the day felt podcasting incident a little show called my brother My brother me Jordan Jesse go Bullseye and Judge John Hodgman and a host of others so thank you for listening to solvents a and a host of others, so thank you for listening to Sobhones, a marital tour of Miss Guy of Medicine. And don't drill a hole in your head, don't drill a hole in your head.

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