Sacred Text Describes Successful Brain Surgery in Ancient Tibet The history of brain surgery may date back as far as the late Stone Age, and some medical historians consider it the earliest operation ever performed. Recently, a specialist on Tibetan culture uncovered an intriguing account of ancient brain surgery in the 2,900-year-old Tibetan Tripiaka, a collection of Buddhist texts passed down orally for thousands of years before being recorded in Sanskrit during the third century B.C. Perhaps most significantly, the description suggests that ancient Tibetan doctors conducted craniotomies and related procedures to ease patients’ symptoms and not as part of a religious ritual, as some scholars have suggested. The Tibetan…