Medicine: Echo of the Incas

The 31-year-old patient lay in an up-to-date operating room in Lima, Peru, surrounded by sterile gadgets and the paraphernalia of modern anesthesia. At hand, to forestall infection, were ultramodern antibiotics. Flanking the patient were two of Peru’s most distinguished surgeons, Drs. Francisco Grańa Reyes and Esteban Rocca. But their instruments were bronze chisels and saws made of obsidian (volcanic glass) which were 2,000 years old when Francisco Pizarro conquered Peru.

Tightly wound around the patient’s head was a three-layer bandage tourniquet such as Inca and pre-Inca surgeons used. With bronze chisel and copper hammer,

Grańa and Rocca cut a hole in the left side of the patient’s skull, and cleaned out a blood clot (the result of an injury) that had been pressing against his brain and had robbed him of the power of speech. They replaced the piece of skull and sewed up the scalp. The whole operation had taken 14 minutes. The ancient surgical instruments were sent back to the National Museum of Archeology. Last week the doctors examined their patient, told him he could go back to his work as a cabinetmaker this week.

The Lima surgeons’ feat was no idle trick. For years they had studied ancient skulls, instruments and bandages, and had practiced using the museum relics in autopsies. After their first use on a live patient, Dr. Grańa was delighted. The operation proved, he said, that the ancients’ tools and methods were as good as the moderns’, and in some ways perhaps better. For the future, he foresaw wider use of the tourniquet bandage, which had given him an almost bloodless field of operation. And he thinks another pre-Inca wrinkle may prove useful: flexible bronze needles, which the surgeon can bend when putting in stitches.