Talk:Surgery in ancient Rome

Trepanation
New light on cranial surgery in ancient Rome, Mariani-Costantini et al. (paywalled ☹️)

In 1995, the skeleton of a hydrocephalic child was excavated from a cemetery that was probably part of a villa in suburban Rome, on the site of the ancient town of Fidenae.The child was 5–6 years old, on the basis of the teeth, and was dated to about the end of the first or the start of the second century AD on archaeological context. The remarkably well-preserved cranium of this child (figure 1) is a fine example of trepanation, which may have been intended to alleviate the clinical signs of an endocranial space-occupying lesion. The large frontoparietal opening, which is bigger on the outer than on the inner table, was obtained by the grooving method, as clearly shown by the presence of a well-demarcated peripheral track marking the line of surgical incision (figure 1). The U-shaped cross-section of this track suggests that a blunt-edged surgical instrument, possibly a chisel, was used to avoid meningeal damage. In this respect, Galen’s treatise De methodo medendi, written in the second half of the second century AD, specifically states that cutting through the cranial bones is safer than drilling when operating on thin-walled skulls.

Might be useful?  Tewdar  09:08, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for providing this source, I will look into it. Graearms (talk) 02:34, 20 May 2022 (UTC)