SUPERSTITIONS : Headaches May Be Cured By Driving A Nail Into The Skull LORE & SOURCES Ivan the Terrible was said to have ordered nails to be driven into the heads of his courtiers if they complained of headaches. During the late seventeenth century the medical profession adopted a cure, called 'trephaning', which was composed of cutting a hole in the side of the skull, often as large as a coin, and allowing skin to grow over it. Documented results show some degree of success, though failures are less spoken off. Even in the last fifty years, the medical process of 'lobotomy' entailed the driving of a long metal pin into the frontal lobe of the brain, skewering it about in a clockwise motion and then pulling it out again. The 'cure' was applied to particularly extreme mental patients and was said to 'calm them down'. It also very often either killed them or turned them into permanent vegetables. In ancient Rome and Egypt the same idea was applied, and the superstition of curing a headache by driving a nail into the skull derives from this. Incidentally, it doesn't work! BACK TO TOP

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