@article{9fb612ee565e4893a5b476805ccd4a9a,
title = "The legacy of hephaestus: The first craniotomy",
abstract = "Hephaestus is best known as the Greek god of metalworking, fire, and fine arts. As the only Olympian deity not endowed with physical perfection, he has been considered misfortunate among the Olympians. However, textual analysis of his myths reveals that Hephaestus was highly regarded by Greeks for his manual skills and intelligence. Furthermore, one of the myths about Hephaestus indicates that he performed the first recorded craniotomy. This text asserts that Hephaestus intentionally performed the craniotomy to remove a mass growing inside Zeus' head, thereby relieving him of an excruciating headache. The successful craniotomy resulted in the birth of the goddess Athena. From a neurosurgical perspective, the story is allegorical. Nonetheless, it represents the surgical management of intracranial ailments, which is thought to have been reported in Greece centuries later by Hippocrates.",
keywords = "Craniotomy, Hephaestus, Hippocrates, History of neurosurgery, Intracranial pressure",
author = "Brasiliense, {Leonardo B.C.} and Sam Safavi-Abbasi and Crawford, {Neil R.} and Spetzler, {Robert F.} and Nicholas Theodore",
note = "Funding Information: This work was supported by The Francis Crick Institute, which receives its core funding from Cancer Research UK (FC001202), the UK Medical Research Council (FC001202) and the Wellcome Trust (FC001202) (M.T. and P.V.L.). M.T. is supported as a postdoctoral fellow by the European Union{\textquoteright}s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Marie Sk{\l}odowska-Curie Grant agreement no. 747852-SIOMICS). P.V.L. is a Winton Group Leader in recognition of the Winton Charitable Foundation{\textquoteright}s support toward the establishment of The Francis Crick Institute. I.M. is funded by a Cancer Research UK Career Development Fellowship (C57387/A21777). D.C.W. is funded by the Li Ka Shing Foundation. This work was supported by grant 1U24CA210957 to P.T.S.. F.M. acknowledges support from the University of Cambridge, Cancer Research UK and Hutchison Whampoa Limited. Parts of this work were funded by Cancer Research UK core grant C14303/A17197 (F.M.). This project was enabled through access to the MRC eMedLab Medical Bioinformatics infrastructure, supported by the UK Medical Research Council (grant no. MR/ L016311/1) (M.T. and P.V.L.). Parts of the results published here are based on data generated by the TCGA Research Network (http://cancergenome.nih.gov/). Funding Information: A.S. is supported by the Chris Rokos Fellowship in Evolution and Cancer and by Cancer Research UK (A22909). T.A.G. is supported by Cancer Research UK (A19771). C.P.B. is supported by the Wellcome Trust (097319/Z/11/Z). B.W. is supported by a Geoffrey W. Lewis Post-Doctoral Training fellowship. A.S. and T.A.G. are jointly supported by the Wellcome Trust (202778/B/16/Z and 202778/Z/16/Z, respectively). This work was also supported by Wellcome Trust funding to the Centre for Evolution and Cancer (105104/Z/14/Z).",
year = "2010",
month = oct,
doi = "10.1227/NEU.0b013e3181ee022b",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "67",
pages = "881--884",
journal = "Neurosurgery",
issn = "0148-396X",
publisher = "Lippincott Williams and Wilkins",
number = "4",
}