It's sick in the tummy,
And it aches under the skin
It totally explodes the head
The pressure is immense!
I don't know if it's Sadness..
Or Worry...
Or Fear...
Empathy....
A painful cocktail of all of the above.
I'm pretty sure they would have said that one of these could do me some good:
This is how I would have been treated 100 years ago - the awful practice of 'Trepanning".. to relieve pressure in the head and also to 'let out evil spirits'
UGH!!!
Somehow right now, it does feel like it would work! I think it would be a different matter if the drill was pressed again my head though.. I think it could have made sense in the olden days though, if someone was hearing voices all the time and stuff.. that they must me trapped inside your head and if you made a hole in the head, they could simply fly away!
I saw one of these tools for real in a museum in Letterkenny recently. It had been used in St. Conals, the lunatic asylum which housed many many patients over the years who suffered from anything between depression, epilepsy, insanity, idiocy. St. Conals was a place where women were sent if they became pregnant, where boys and men would be sent in order to take over their land or inheritances. All these people were subject to various forms of 'treatments' including Trepanning.
It's so awful to thing about.
The exhibition that showed the drill also had records on display of various patients. I saw the record file of one girl who had been send to the asylum because she broke a window while having an argument with her dad - A CLEAR sign of insanity (!) and within two years of being admitted, she contracted TB from another patient and died.
I also saw on display the electrolysis machines used for shock therapy, hugely oversized and bulky syringes which would make even a nurse from these time faint! Leather straps that were used to tie patients down.. and also the 'safety' cutlery that had to be used by all (of which I could not find any examples online)
It was very intense..
the feelings that obsess you, that prompted this blog, what is underneath them?
ReplyDeletecancer.....
ReplyDeleteLaura, I love you x I'd like to see this exhibition...
ReplyDeleteSuch feelings are perfectly natural - your brain is throwing you these uber-disturbing images to prepare you for facing (hopefully) less challenging events in your life. This enables you come to terms with minor or major traumas happening and also to plan 'what if' scenarios so that you can be pro-active when emergencies happen.
ReplyDeleteE.g. If you drive a car often, you may imagine driving into a concrete barrier at high speed or into s croud. Seemingly horrific, some uneducated people would think this was 'sick' to have this come into your head, but going through these thoughts enables you to cognitively process what would happen if these things occured, making your brain associate massive pain with both eventualities and thus avoid them at all costs in reality.
So don't worry: You're not in need of a Craniotomy! ...you're perfectly normal.
It's people whose brains don't introduce them to these things and who don't think 'what if' that cause accidents, freeze when they need to act, and become paralysed with fear if something dangerous happens.