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The Ancient World

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Modern Drug use

Abstract

The first medical activity of which the bones of antiquity provide a record is trephination. Skulls of the New Stone Age, which in the Near East began about 9000 years BC, show that our prehistoric forefathers sometimes survived this operation in which an opening was made through the vault of the skull. An example, from Jericho, and of about 2200 BC, is shown in Figure 1. The subject was fairly extensively reported by Just Marie Lucas-Championnière (1843–1913) in his Trépanation néolithique, trépanation pre-Colombienne, trépanation des Kabyles, trépanation traditionnelle 3 published in Paris in 1912 — this eminent French surgeon being of interest as having been one of the first to adopt the principles of Listerism, and having written the first authoritative work on antiseptic surgery after introducing the practice of antisepsis into France.

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  1. Ronald D. Mann MD, MRCGP, FCP
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Mann, R.D. (1984). The Ancient World. In: Modern Drug use. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5586-8_1

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