'Dueling Neurosurgeons': How brain injuries have shaped science
In 1559, the king of France was hit in the head by a flying fragment of a jousting lance.
The lance struck, as author Sam Kean describes, "right between the eyebrows." It "raked across his naked face, wrenching his skull sideways and digging into his right eye."
Two of the most esteemed physicians in Europe were summoned to tend to the wounded king. What they did and did not do in their attempts to save Henry II is at the center of Kean's book, "The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons."
Despite their efforts, Henry II died days later, after suffering seizures and partial paralysis. What the doctors learned from the king's death, however, went on to shape the field of neuroscience.
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Kean joined MPR News' Kerri Miller to talk about his book and other remarkable brain injuries in history. The lance-gone-awry is only one of several events he examines.
His book unravels readers' ideas about brain surgery. For most, the phrase "brain surgery" evokes images of sterile operating rooms, highly-trained doctors and the latest in modern science.
But brain surgery, Kean points out, is anything but modern.
"If you look back at the whole history of medicine throughout the world, you can find skulls that are 8,000 or 9,000 years old where there's evidence of surgery," Kean said. And those ancient surgeries sometimes worked. "There's evidence of healing on those bones, so you know they lived."
The ancient surgeries likely involved removing a piece of the skull to allow the brain to expand. That's one of the most dangerous realities of brain injuries — the brain swells but the skull is an enclosed area. Removing a piece of the skull relieves the pressure.
Even if the tools used were primitive, early brain surgeons had success.
Kean recounted a study done in the early 1900s that compared brain injury patients treated in a leading London hospital to those treated with traditional medicine in New Guinea.
"If you look at the survival rates, the people in New Guinea had a much higher chance of surviving these operations, even though they were using coconut milk to sanitize and shark's teeth to open the skull," Kean said.
"The Dueling Neurosurgeons" dips into even more history surrounding brain injuries and attempts at treatment. Kean offers up a compulsively readable, and slightly macabre, tale of unlocking the brain's secrets.