Homo Sapiens Correctus
HUGES, Hugo Bart
Amsterdam: n.p.. [1964].
Description:
Paper scroll (2760x430mm) with a facsimile (translated into English) of Huges's manifesto, written while in prison, for an expanded consciousness achieved through the control of blood to the brain. which gives the work its alternative name: The Mechanism of BrainBloodVolume (BBV). The original manuscript of Homo Sapiens Correctus was written in Dutch in 1962. In 1964, a facsimile was issued in both Dutch and in an English translation. The text, which is organised in nine sections (with titles such as "Chemical", "Osmotical", "Brain Metabolism" is arranged around ten coloured diagrams showing how blood is distributed between the brain and the heart. Apart from the occasional chip and a few closed tears, this copy is in very good condition, with the illustrations especially clean and fresh. At the foot of the scroll is written: "Amsterdam, Bart Huges. Made in prison. Copy rights fl.100.000,-". Institutionally rare, OCLC records only four cop ies of the version in English. And of those sold at auction in the last twenty years, all but one have been in Dutch and it seems that the English version is considerably more scarce.
Huges is probably the most celebrated enthusiast for trepanation, a procedure which he performed on himself on 6th January 1965 using a dentist's drill. Huges's auto-surgery was a long time in the planning. As a medical student in the late 1950s and early 1960s he developed the idea that as humans walk upright, blood drains out of the brain. Furthermore as we move from childhood to adulthood, our cranial sutures close, cutting down the flow of blood to the brain. Huges started to work on ways of recovering our childlike state. Drugs were a significant part of his method - he was an enthusiastic user of marijuana (his daughter was called Maria Juana) and LSD - and it was while on mescaline that he first understood how trepanation might work to reduce the volume of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain thus increasing the volume of brainblood. Homo Sapiens Correctus explores a number of alternatives to drilling a hole in his head ("Physical", "Brain Metabolism", "Psychovitamins") which is just as well as it is a spectacularly gruesome procedure. But there is no doubt that Huges's principal contribution to the expansion of consciousness and the returning of our minds to their childlike states lies in his evangelical adoption of trepanation. Huges (who was still a medical student at the time) has said that he wrote this scroll to educate doctors about the benefits of the procedure. "I visited about twenty professors, of psychiatry, anthropology, neuro-anatomy etc. and their reactions were without exception negative". So, not a success medically, but this extraordinary scroll has secured its place as a key work of the 1960s counterculture.
Description:
Paper scroll (2760x430mm) with a facsimile (translated into English) of Huges's manifesto, written while in prison, for an expanded consciousness achieved through the control of blood to the brain. which gives the work its alternative name: The Mechanism of BrainBloodVolume (BBV). The original manuscript of Homo Sapiens Correctus was written in Dutch in 1962. In 1964, a facsimile was issued in both Dutch and in an English translation. The text, which is organised in nine sections (with titles such as "Chemical", "Osmotical", "Brain Metabolism" is arranged around ten coloured diagrams showing how blood is distributed between the brain and the heart. Apart from the occasional chip and a few closed tears, this copy is in very good condition, with the illustrations especially clean and fresh. At the foot of the scroll is written: "Amsterdam, Bart Huges. Made in prison. Copy rights fl.100.000,-". Institutionally rare, OCLC records only four cop ies of the version in English. And of those sold at auction in the last twenty years, all but one have been in Dutch and it seems that the English version is considerably more scarce.
Huges is probably the most celebrated enthusiast for trepanation, a procedure which he performed on himself on 6th January 1965 using a dentist's drill. Huges's auto-surgery was a long time in the planning. As a medical student in the late 1950s and early 1960s he developed the idea that as humans walk upright, blood drains out of the brain. Furthermore as we move from childhood to adulthood, our cranial sutures close, cutting down the flow of blood to the brain. Huges started to work on ways of recovering our childlike state. Drugs were a significant part of his method - he was an enthusiastic user of marijuana (his daughter was called Maria Juana) and LSD - and it was while on mescaline that he first understood how trepanation might work to reduce the volume of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain thus increasing the volume of brainblood. Homo Sapiens Correctus explores a number of alternatives to drilling a hole in his head ("Physical", "Brain Metabolism", "Psychovitamins") which is just as well as it is a spectacularly gruesome procedure. But there is no doubt that Huges's principal contribution to the expansion of consciousness and the returning of our minds to their childlike states lies in his evangelical adoption of trepanation. Huges (who was still a medical student at the time) has said that he wrote this scroll to educate doctors about the benefits of the procedure. "I visited about twenty professors, of psychiatry, anthropology, neuro-anatomy etc. and their reactions were without exception negative". So, not a success medically, but this extraordinary scroll has secured its place as a key work of the 1960s counterculture.