Meckel's Cave

Meckel’s Cave

Virgil, Dante and Da Gama, Listen!

Your legacy lives on with Kassam.

Guide to the exiled from traditional medicine,

Explorer of the deep recesses of the brain.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai er una selva oscura,

che la diritta via era smarrita[1].

Spelunkular, par excellence,

exploiting the geography of the skull

proximity of the nose to the cave

tailoring tools for the mission.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era e cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

che nel pensier rinova la aura![2]

Swath your patient in the ancient clothes of the dead

Lie her supine, eyes taped, limbs secured,

Head completely restricted against movement for surgical precision.

Tant’ e amara che poco e piu morte;

ma per trattar del ben chi’i’ vi trovai

diro de laltre cose ch’I’ v’ho scorte.[3]

Screens are your eyes as your partner, Carrau, slices through the nose, you snake your tools

through the cavity and drill at the wall.

Io non so ben ridir com’i’v’intrai,

tant’ era pien di sonno a qual punto

che la verace via abbandonai.[4]

Penetrate now through the bone,

Stalactites and stalagmites of arteries, tissue and nerves.

Suddenly, a bright white spot reflects your light!

Unexpected deposit, it is not on the map of Meckel’s cave.

Ma poi ch’i’ fui al pie d’un colle giunto

la dove terminavva quella valle

che m’avvea dip aura il cor compunto[5]

A decision must be made:

Take the deposit and sever the nerve,

Or take what can be sacrificed for study and leave the entangled remains.

guardai in alto e vidi le sur spale

vestite fia de’raggi del pianeta

che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle[6]

Prudence dictates the course.

At least the pressure should subside.

Backwards now you travel,

Taking nose tissue for a bandage at the entry way to the brain.

Trace your steps out.

Send the tissue to pathology.

For ten hours the mummy remained motionless.

Assistants release and unwrap her to rise again in recovery.

Doctors Kassam, Gardner, Prevedello and Carrau have had far more challenging cases.

They save lives every day.

They are our modern explorers of the uncharted parts of the human body: the brain.

Allor fu la paura un poco queta …[7]

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[1] Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost. To tell about those woods is hard – so tangled and rough

[2] And savage that thinking of it now, I felt the old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter. And yet, to treat the good I found there as well

[3] I’ll tell what I saw, though how I came to enter I cannot well say, being so full of sleep, whatever moment it was I began to blunder

[4] Off the true path. But when I came to stop below a hill that marked one end of the valley that had pierced my heart with terror, I looked up

[5] Toward the crest and saw its shoulders already mantled in rays of that bright planet that shows the road to everyone, whatever our journey

[6] Then I cold feel the terror begin to ease that churned in my heart’s lake all through the night. As one still panting, ashore from dangerous seas,

[7] Looks back at the deep he has escaped …

From The Inferno of Dante, A New Verse Translation by Robert Pinsky, 1994