repanation was practiced on every continent through every time period and by every race of mankind until the advent of brain surgery in this century. Doctors, today, have been taught that trepanation was done in past centuries for superstitious, magical or religious reasons. They generally look on trepanation as a practice akin to blood letting. They scoff at it. They deny that trepanation could have a reasonable basis. They fear that to practice trepanation would demean their professional status. They have stated that they wouldn't undertake it if their lives depended on it. And further, trepanation can't be investigated by any individual doctor because a board must be set up to approve all research projects connected to universities and hospitals. However trepanation doesn't go away. It is ingrained in our history. The ancestors of modern Europeans, the Battle-Ax people, were prodigious trepanners as well as were all other ancient peoples. There is an extensive scientific literature on trepanation both in medicine and anthropology. The risk to benefit ratio would have to have been very favorable for the practice to have been so widely practiced but official investigators haven't been able to see that there is a both a rationale and a benefit to this procedure. There seems to be a deliberate intent amongst them not to see, maybe even a conspiracy, that there is a benefit to making a hole in the skull bone. This is understandable though because if doctors and scientists recognized the benefit they would be obliged to announce to the world that upright walking humans need a hole in the head! It's unlikely that doctors will be stepping forward with this announcement anytime soon so in the meantime the public will have to educate itself and then educate the doctors.