The apron-clad conservator at the New York Academy of Medicine, Anne Hillam, held up two skulls last week, one in each hand, and asked, “How many do you think we need? Is four overdoing it?” Each ceramic skull had at least one hole in it, the results of the once common medical practice of trepanning – boring a hole in the head to relieve pain and pressure. Tucking the best specimens under each arm, she placed them on a shelf covered in red felt, not far from a gleaming battle-ax, a broadsword, a crossbow, and a Roman gladius.

The skulls perch at the entrance of the exhibit “Holes in the Head: Mending Head Injuries From Pericles to Bonaparte,” which opens today with an accompanying lecture on medicine in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean. The exhibit showcases more than 35 books and illustrations about the rather gruesome medical procedures practiced on suffering souls over the course of 23 centuries. The display complements the Metropolitan Museum’s show “The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt,” which opened September 13.

“You can find trepanning of skulls in almost every place in the world,” the curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Academy, Miriam Mandelbaum, said. “Most head wounds were incurred on the battlefield, and the people that dealt with these were military surgeons.” Some holes show bone growth, which mean that the patient survived the operation. Some have more than one hole, indicating the patient not only survived, but went back for more.

The rare books on display highlight the frustration surgeons faced when treating head wounds. In the second Latin edition of “Corpus Hippocraticum,” the father of modern medicine warns against infection when treating head injuries with trepanning. A hand-colored book by the French surgeon Ambroise Pare begins with a dedication to King Henry II of France, who, despite a consultation by Pare, died after a jousting lance pierced his brain.

The 1596 edition of “Chirurgiae Universalis,” by Venetian surgeon Giovanni della Croce, has the first woodcuts illustrating operating room surgeries. In one drawing, the agonized patient lies on the bed in the middle of a room. The surgeon stands over the bed, tools in hand, while a cat and a dog play in the corner. (“They threw the offal to the animals,” Ms. Mandelbaum explained.) The risk of infection from the surgeries often outweighed the risk of the procedure itself, which was relatively successful. Egyptians used honey as a disinfectant, and many battlefield surgeons used wine.

Ms. Mandelbaum said that discoveries made by the experimenting surgeons have lasting scientific value. “Their observations were quite astute,” she said. “The works on head wounds were the beginning of neurology.” She pointed at an illustration of a nine-step procedure for trepanning. “This pointy tool would be used to pull the bone up off the brain.”

Time for some fresh air.

Lecture: Tonight, 6 p.m., free. Exhibit: Today through January 16, Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Wednesday, 9 a.m.-7 p.m., New York Academy of Medicine, Academy Library, 1216 Fifth Ave. at 103rd Street, 212-822-7200, free.