Primitive trephining in Peru / [Manuel Antonio Muñiz].

  • Muñiz, Manuel Antonio, 1861-1897.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Primitive trephining in Peru / [Manuel Antonio Muñiz]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    those of the South Sea islanders, and (b) neoteric, or that performed modernly, or by means of metal, including the skilless operations on domestic animals. Commonly, or always, neoteric trephining is accul- tural, and represents the engrafting of a higher technology on the stock of a lower sophiology. Specialized trephining may in like man- ner be subdivided into two classes—(a) rude, or that performed in a simple and barbarous manner by untrained or sliamanistic operators without knowledge of physiology, as among the Kabyle; and (b) refined, or that performed skillfully and intelligently, as by civilized surgeons. Classed with respect to motive or purpose, trephining may be consid- ered as (1) thaumaturgic and (2) therapeutic. Thaumaturgic trephining is presumed to act in an occult or mystical wray, either for the good of the sufferer or for the benefit of the operator or others; it may be styled (a) vicarious, when designed to benefit the operator or others, and (b) sortilegic, when practiced in the interest of the sufferer. Vicarious trephining as thus defined is commonly (so far as known through observation, always) post-mortem, while sortilegic trephining must be essentially ante-mortem. Under these definitions the prehistoric tre- phining recorded by Broca, Fletcher, and others must have been vicarious, at least so far as post-mortem; while the operations exem- plified among the South Sea islanders, and perhaps also among the Kabyle, are sortilegic, and thus occupy a well-marked early stage in the development of medical practice. Therapeutic trephining may be defined as that employed intentionally and intelligently, and without regard to the supernatural, to relieve a disorder; and it may be either (a) empiric, when it is not, or (b) scientific, when it is, guided by knowledge of physiology or etiology, one or both. Trephining may be classed also by the culture-grade of the people practicing it, as (1) savage, (2) barbaric, and (3) civilized; or, more con- veniently, as (1) uncivilized and (2) civilized. This classification crosses, and in a measure corrects, the grouping by period, since it emphasizes the persistence in some countries of characteristics which in other countries existed only during the prehistoric past. These classes are defined from the standpoint of anthropology rather than from that of surgery or medicine in general; yet their recognition seems essential to comprehension of the origin and development of one of the most remarkable among the triumphs of modern surgery. Their significance is such as to warrant juxtaposition and careful comparison: Period Method , c • v i S Refined Modern Specialized.. •' Ku(le -p, . ... s Neoteric Prehistoric Primitive ... \ Archaic Motive Therapeutic Thaumaturgic. \ Scientific ) Empiric j Sortilegic \ Vicarious Culture-firade Civilized Uncivilized On comparing the method classes with the periods and culture-grades, it is found that archaic trephining was chiefly prehistoric and exclu- sively eodemotic, but that neoteric trephining persists, at least ves- tigially, among backward representatives of civilized peoples; yet that