Amazon has a whole book of these fantastic lurid magazine covers, It’s A Man’s World.

They run the gamut from Man attacked by Animals, Man attacked by Fish, Man attacked by Nazis, and Man attacked by Hippies.

The greatest, however, is an image of a mad Nazi doktor sawing off a girl’s arm, his “special” assistant is bringing him the freshly removed (and bandaged!) arm of a gorilla, which is seen sulking morosely in a cage in the background.

Comment by Haux — April 24, 2008 @ 4:10 pm

Too right you are friend Haux. This is quite possibly the best image I’ve seen a while which, considering the madness I deposit here on a regular basis, is no mean feat. It’s A Man’s World is currently available for ridiculously cheap; having just purchased a copy I suggest you do the same. A high res version of the above image is available upon request.

I have always understood the passion that drives the earnest trepanation enthusiast. Ensconced in the pickling sarcophagus of my skull, my brain meats are trapped, thirsty for the sweet taste of fresh air. It’s maddening: my brain picks up an electric drill and knows it’s a trigger-pull away from the cranial equivalent of a Sunday constitutional, but it doesn’t quite dare, knowing full well that if the parietal lobe gets a breath of fresh air, the cerebellum’s going to start complaining next.

So I refrain. But over at Retrospectable, my hot imaginary neuroscientist girlfriend Shelley Batts has stripped down to her bikini and written a post pointing out this excellent history of trepanation by the Neurophilosophy guys. Heady reading. Why did cavemen trepan? To treat migraines, apparently.

An Illustrated History of Trepanation [Neurophilosophy]