Could you really do this to someone?

Could you really do this to someone?

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could you really do this to someone and they stay awake?



[edit on 8/9/08 by FredT]

Umm...I'm guessing no. Why do you want to know anyways?
To not even flinch while a person is cutting your head open would take excessive amounts of drugs--or an impossible amount-I'm no doctor though.

Hannibal really drugged the guy up hardcore. I think that it is possible to do that to someone. His brain is intact, he just doesnt have anything protecting it. The skull essentially is just there to protect your brain.. you can live without a skull.

It is possible. I saw a program that showed brian surgery while the person was still awake. Pretty freaky, the patient was talking to the nurses and doctor the whole time they poked around the brain.

Edit to add: the program was on Discovery health. It wasn't House or ER.

[edit on 9/8/08 by quaple_pouge]

reply to post by hikix


I guess your right, I think it is possible now.

But try living without a skull for a day. If something fell on top of your [non existent] head, it would do great damage to our brain. Try sleeping without a skull, the brain contains a lot of water (and probably other nasty juices) and that would get all over your pillow and then your face and yeah, it's better not to talk about it.

It would hurt like hell cutting the top of your skull off without anesthesia, but as stated before, brain surgeons expose parts of the brain all the time for surgery. So, yes, it is possible.

A couple of things here first:

Yes patients are awake during brain surgery sometimes. Why? The neurosurgeon has to map areas they are repairing, cutting into, or taking out, An awake patient can let the surgeon know when lets say they are near the speech center etc. A local anesthetic block will alleviate the pain issues.

As far as that clip goes, there is no way you can simply CUT the skull of an human with a scalpel. They use a special saw for that type of procedure. When we put in an intercranial pressure monitoring device (aka a "bolt" in medspeak) a small hand powered drill is used to bore the hole through the skull

There is a difference between drugged up and having an block or general anesthesia. To drug that guy up to the point of holding still and feeling no pain the guy would be out totaly and perhaps OD's to the point of not breathing.

The head is very very vascular and the complete lack of bleeding without cautery is a bit bogus too.

reply to post by FredT


If you watch the entire scene in the movie, he does us a power saw to detach the top of the skull.

I'm not sure what the results of cutting into the skull would be, other than that it would REALLY hurt, but the brain itself doesn't have any way to sense pain. You could poke and prod and cut away at the brain and if you were conscious, you wouldn't feel anything. I'd imagine that the bone can't feel anything either, but I don't know that for sure. The flesh and muscle, though, well obviously that's gonna hurt :p If you were somehow able to hold still and let someone do that to you, I think you could manage if you didn't pass out. It would probably be really messy too, because the face has a lot of blood vessels in it. I once got a cut just above my eye that nearly needed stitches, and the blood covered that entire side of my face in just a minute or two, so cutting like that picture shows is going to be even worse.

There was one experiment shown in Britain a few years ago where one surgeon thought he had a cure for parkinsons disease. For this the patient had to be awake as it focused on the brain. There are no nerves in the brain so once you're through the skull, you fell nothing.

The guy received a local aneasthetic and the surgeon literally used a carpenters hand drill so he could 'feel' when he was breaking through.
Once he exposed the brain he had a good rumage round until the patient stopped shaking.

It worked.

I could probably do the opening of the head thing, but I couldn't do the eating of the brain thing. That is unless I was gonna die from lack of food. But I don't think I could do that to a person that was sitting there awake. The interesting part is they don't show the skull being sawed apart. Last time I check you need a special kind of surgical equipment to do that.

What kind of mind does it take to do such a thing? Well I don't think you have to be anyone special. I depends on the upbringing of the individual, like cannibals don't think twice about it. It's the way they have learned and been taught. You don't have to be detached from your feelings at all. You just need to be taught that it is a ok think to do.

Now I wouldn't myself do such a thing. But then I am a veggie person, not a meat person at all. I am sure there are many folks that have did this over the time of this world, people that we wouldn't suspect at all. Many cultures have many different methods of living that we would touch with a ten foot pole. I can imagine eating monkey brains or beetles during my life. I would if I had too, to survive though, not just for a meal.

The stuff in movies, particularly this one is what makes Hollywood movies successful. Obviously it works, but then it gives people ideas. Sometimes I wonder if there weren't so many strange ideas portrayed in the movies, that so many strange things wouldn't be happening in the world. I am not saying that movies are to blame, but they do give people ideas. And not necessarily good ones.

if i hated the person and i wanted revenge enough then i could

i wouldnt eat his brain though

but i love Hannibal Lecter, hes an incredible character