I assume without checking that the HBO show Rome is historically accurate. I find it surprising, therefore, that they performed brain surgery in ancient Rome. And I find it disturbing that they did it with no apparent anesthetic. Most disturbing of all is that they actually show it graphically on HBO. Who wants to see glass bits pulled from a brain and a metal plate inserted below a man's head flesh? Not me.
Luckily the show provides much more graphic sex than brain surgery; I don't mind that so much. I guess I'll keep watching.
UPDATE: Liepa found out that the brain surgery was authentic.
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Yeah i'm not sure i believe that. I have seen things on the history channel that claim ancient civilizations sometimes performed brain surgery. The proof they use is that they find skulls which have been cut into, and then healed. Meaning the skulls were cut into but the person was still alive, and continued to live afterwards. That's not proof to me that they were performing a medical procedure, all it's proof of is they cut into some guys skull. It could have just as easily been some sort of bizarre religious ritual as a medical procedure.
isn't the history of medicine in rome documented, though? somebody should check on that and let me know.
in the show the doctor used a cylinder shaped saw with a bow on it axis to open up the skull. it seemed primitive but still impressive.
i'm still not convinced that those surgeries performed and useful purpose. It seems from the description that they were often done to ward off magic, etc. I think it was more like leaching. Something purportedly medical, but to say they were really performing brain surgery i think is a misrepresentation of the truth.
Also in terms of graphic gore/violence versus graphic sex, William H. Macy, one of my favorite actors, was giving an interview in which was talking about the television rating systems and felt it was obscene that you are allowed to show a woman getting disemboweled on tv, but you're not allowed to show her breasts. What kind of a culture is this when it's okay/normal for people to watch a person getting murdered, but wrong to watch a naked person.
What do you expect from a nation born of Puritanism? Showing your boobs? Never! Violent slayings? All the time!
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