We’ve still got a long way to go in helping the mentally ill, but this look at bizarre historical cures for mental illness show just how far we’ve come.
In the twenty-first hundred , mental illness is mostly treated with a combining of therapy and medication , often with fantabulous results .
But it was n’t always this way : Centuries of test and error led us to the point where we can successfully assist the mentally ill with their chronic condition , and help them populate in comparative harmony with the world .
Before our current process became commonplace , many radical methods were used to treat patient role affect as “ mad , ” which include everything from drill to purges to spiritual rituals . have ’s take a journeying back in clock time and explore the antiquated style our ancestors sought to help their fellow man …
Trepanation
A house painting depicting trepanning .
Even in the Stone Age , primitive peoples were able-bodied to recognize mental illness , though their method acting of deal with it was as far from our current mode as their acculturation is from ours . In short : they would contract hole in each other ’s head .
This “ treatment ” was used all over the globe , with the personal manner of cut rove from using stone knife to cut the bone in a circle and then rustle the disc away , to drilling a circle of holes point tight together and then slue in between them . The skull would be penetrate , but the tissue layer surrounding the nous would be left entire .
A painting depicting trepanning.
Trepanning was used to treat insanity , epilepsy , melancholy , and any number of other mental ill , but the common theme of the process seems to be that shorten a hole in the head would release evil spirits and relieve the patient of their anguish . Sometimes , the piece of osseous tissue was given to the smite person or their crime syndicate later , as a talisman .
Astonishingly , the practice continued until as recently as the eighteenth C , when it was finally given up as the fatality rate rate hovered somewhere around 25 percentage . Even today , anytype of psychosurgery is considered to be experimental and not to be taken gently . The chances of drill a yap in someone ’s heading with gem dick to discharge the demons inside being a successful method acting of treatment ? Slim to none .
