Trephination

I have been neglecting this blog for a few days with family visits and the fact that I had to sit as a panel member to hear an arbitration case this week. But I'm back.


I love the names brew pubs come up with to name their beer. My favorite brew pub Bushwakker's has, Slough Shark, Sodbuster Brown Ale and my favorite, Mother-in-Law, a blend of stout and bitter.

Earlier this spring they started carrying Trephination Double IPA again, I remember having a conversation about where the name might come from. No one seemed to know. So I looked it up.

The word trephination means an opening made by a circular saw. The word is mainly used to describe an operation which involved removing a piece of the skull  from a living patient to expose the  tough fibrous membrane forming the outer envelope of the brain.

Generally, it is surmised that, on the living, it was performed to provide for the escape or entrance of spirits.

The practice pretty much disappeared in modern times but sometime in the early '70s (he doesn't remember exactly when), a jeweler from Pennsylvania by the name of Peter Halvorson  secured a power drill to his bathroom ceiling and proceeded to perforate his skull. He reported that it took several drill bits. They kept getting clogged with blood and bone. Halvorson stopped when he felt the drill give way and penetrate into the cranial cavity.  No report as to why he did it.

I wonder if we really should be drinking this stuff.