This skull from the Bronze Age shows three examples of trepanation. The individual survived the first of the three operations, as seen by the the healing that has occurred around the hole. However, the the individual appears to have died shortly after the last of the three instances of trepanation.

Imagine for a moment that you need to have surgery. What would this experience be like for you? For many people today, surgery to correct an illness or health issue involves going to a hospital and having trained surgeons and other health professionals treat them.

How do you think this experience differs from surgery in the past? One of the earliest forms of surgery performed on humans was trepanation. Trepanation involves drilling a hole into the skull of the patient to release intracranial pressure or for other reasons. Cave paintings and other Neolithic evidence suggest that trepanation was used in an attempt to help people suffering from migraines, epilepsy, mental disorders, and head injuries. The earliest example of trepanation appears to be from before 7,000 BCE, and the holes may have been made by using stones to pierce through the bone of the skull. Imagine having a procedure like this done without the benefit of anesthesia or the improved sanitary conditions offered by modern hospitals.

Despite these differences, the ancient practice of trepanation and our modern surgeries have many similarities. One of the primary similarities is that both treatments use experimentation and science to treat human illnesses. How and why did the first trepanation occur? How did ancient peoples decide this was a reasonable treatment for the medical problems for which it was used? We will probably never know the answer to this. However, it is possible that someone noticed that putting a hole in someone's skull released pressure on the brain after an injury or reduced headaches related to brain swelling. From there, people likely experimented with how best to perform this procedure, improving the tools from stones to drills and learning by trial and error what worked best.

Although our treatments for many of the problems that trepanation was used for are different today, we still use many of the same approaches to finding cures and treatments that ancient peoples did. We observe illnesses and note symptoms. We look for ways of reducing symptoms or curing disease. We experiment and try to find the best possible ways of treating people. While our practices have advanced since ancient times, and we apply more systematic approaches to these experiments and trials, they are not so different from the first ancient peoples trying trepanation for the first time.

Today, we build on our knowledge of health and treatments with findings from many different sciences and fields of study. Health sciences are the application of various sciences to health. These involve the scientific study of multiple aspects of disease and health and applying this information to treating and curing diseases and health issues. In this unit, we will explore the basic foundations of these fields and how they impact our lives.