OCR Text |
Show Indians Well Skilled in Art of Trepanning Surgery, in at least one form, was an advanced art In the New world before the coming of Columbus. This was the operation for wounds in the skull, known as trephining. Such is the conclusion of Dr. Ales Hrdlicka. curator of physical anthropology of the Smithsonian Institution, from an Intensive study of the "trepanned" skulls In the National museum collections. collec-tions. In the Andes, he says, there were skilled "specialists" in this line who perfected their technique on corpses and then operated with extreme ex-treme boldness and rather uniform success on the living. For the most part they were surgeons attending to the wounded after a battle. Doctor Hrdlicka believes that the beginnings of this surgical art may have been brought from Asia by some of the-original the-original migrants nnd that It connects con-nects with the neolithic trephlnings of Europe and northern Africa. |