A history of the surgery of the cranial sutures

While the calvarial sutures have a limited importance for the modern neurosurgeon, they were of considerable interest to cranial surgeons from the time of Hippocrates onwards. The reasons for this interest together with the evolution of ideas are the subjects of this paper.

The texts of surgeons from the time of Hippocrates to the eighteenth century have been studied and analysed.

Hippocrates advised against trepanation through a suture without specifying why. Galen taught that the dura was only attached to the interior of the calvarium at the sutures. The first author to state that the attachment was diffuse was Berengario da Carpi, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. This teaching was subsequently ignored until the eighteenth century, from which time it has been universally accepted. It was also first emphasized in the eighteenth century that it was not dangerous to trepan at the sutures.

This study documents the persistence of incorrect ideas from classical times to the middle of the eighteenth century. These notions would have limited the regions available for surgical access to the skull and thereby limited the benefits to be derived from surgery.