Goes 'ping' when you ring it. Keep up the good work!
Bore Hole New Paperback Book Joe Mellen
09 Jan, 2017
Time for a serious study of trepanation
A fascinating book which I found as interesting for its evocation of Mellen's post-war boyhood and 60's counterculture, as for its controversial subject matter. Much of Mellen's reasoning around the concept of trepanation and brain blood volume (built on the work of his friend & mentor, the Dutch visionary Bart Huges) is certainly compelling. As a layman however, one might ask why no one in the medical or scientific community has picked up upon, or developed, these theories since the 60's. At times Mellen sounds like a lone voice in the wilderness of decades; could he really be that rare outlier - touching on truth? Trepanation, once you move past the notions of insanity and medieval barbarism that it so often provokes, likely has some scientific basis. Perhaps now more than ever, it deserves some serious consideration. Mellen eschews lazy, quasi-spiritual 'mumbo-jumbo' so often associated with psychedelia. His book, stripped of its 60's counter-culture dressing, is actually a reasoned argument for serious scientific enquiry.