Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Cambridge University Hospital, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
World Neurosurg. 2020 Nov;143:33-37. doi: 10.1016/j.wneu.2020.07.037. Epub 2020 Jul 13.
The Iliad is an epic poem chronicling the journey of Achilles in the Trojan War. The poem is one of the earliest sources of written literature in the Western canon. It is not a medical text, but the many and varied descriptions of injuries and their consequences mean that it is an important source for examining the earliest notions of anatomy and knowledge of the pathologies that result from trauma. Head injuries feature prominently in the text and represent written accounts of neurotrauma from nearly 3000 years ago. Previous work on the poem has suggested an awareness of neurological concepts such as nystagmus, syncope, and pupillary dilatation after trauma. In this paper, we identify and categorize all of the head injuries detailed in the text and examine these to identify concepts of functional neuroanatomy that are revealed by the descriptions. We identify and discuss 2 detailed descriptions of head injury, suggesting an awareness of decerebrate posturing after brainstem injury and cerebrospinal fluid leakage following a basal skull fracture.
《伊利亚特》是一部史诗，记叙了阿喀琉斯在特洛伊战争中的旅程。这首诗是西方正典中最早的书面文学作品之一。它不是医学文本，但其中对各种伤害及其后果的描述意味着它是研究最早的解剖学概念和创伤导致的病理学知识的重要来源。头部损伤在文本中占据突出地位，代表了近 3000 年前对神经创伤的书面描述。对这首诗的先前研究表明，人们已经意识到一些神经学概念，如眼球震颤、晕厥和瞳孔扩张等创伤后的症状。在本文中，我们确定并分类了文本中详细描述的所有头部损伤，并对这些损伤进行了检查，以确定描述中揭示的功能性神经解剖学概念。我们确定并讨论了 2 个详细的头部损伤描述，表明人们已经意识到脑损伤后的去大脑强直姿势和颅底骨折后的脑脊液漏。
