Prehistoric Treatment of Epileptics
Prehistoric skulls have been found bearing evidence of the operation of trepanning, arising from the belief that the patient was possessed by devils which would be released by making a hole in the head. This treatment was apparently applied to epileptics. With the primitive instruments and ignorance of anæsthetics in that remote period it could hardly have been a pleasant experience.
The Greeks and Romans believed that the souls escaped with life through the aperture of the death wound, and the Moslems had a superstition that it was necessary in strangling a victim to relax the cord before death occurred, so as to allow the soul to escape.
Even to modern times it is customary to open a window of a death chamber.