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clot from your brain.’
      
“ ‘You are ?’
      
“ ‘Just lie still. Don’t move. I’m nearly finished.’
      
“ ‘So that’s the bastard who’s been giving me all those headaches,’
the man said.”
      
Landy paused and smiled, remembering the occasion. “That’s
word for word what the man said,” he went on, “although the
next day he couldn’t even recollect the incident. It’s a funny
thing, the brain.”
      
“I’ll have the procaine,” I said.
      
“As you wish, William. And now, as I say, I’d take a small
oscillating saw and carefully remove your complete calvarium—the
whole vault of the skull. This would expose the top
half of the brain, or rather the outer covering in which it is
wrapped. You may or may not know that there are three
separate coverings around the brain itself—the outer one called
the dura mater or dura, the middle one called the arachnoid,
and the inner one called the pia mater or pia. Most laymen
seem to have the idea that the brain is a naked thing floating
around in fluid in your head. But it isn’t. It’s wrapped up
neatly in these three strong coverings, and the cerebrospinal
fluid actually flows within the little gap between the two inner
coverings, known as the subarachnoid space. As I told you
before, this fluid is manufactured by the brain and it drains off
into the venous system by osmosis.
      
“I myself would leave all three coverings—don’t they have
lovely names, the dura, the arachnoid, and the pia?—I’d leave
them all intact. There are many reasons for this, not least
among them being the fact that within the dura run the venous
channels that drain the blood from the brain into the jugular.
      
“Now,” he went on, “we’ve got the upper half of your skull
off so that the top of the brain, wrapped in its outer covering,
is exposed. The next step is the really tricky one: to release
the whole package so that it can be lifted cleanly away, leaving
the stubs of the four supply arteries and the two veins hanging
underneath ready to be re-connected to the machine. This is
an immensely lengthy and complicated business involving the
delicate chipping away of much bone, the severing of many
nerves, and the cutting and tying of numerous blood vessels.
The only way I could do it with any hope of success would
be by taking a rongeur and slowly biting off the rest of your
skull, peeling it off downward like an orange until the sides
and underneath of the brain covering are fully exposed. The
problems involved are highly technical and I won’t go into
them, but I feel fairly sure that the work can be done. It’s

simply a question of surgical skill and patience. And don’t
forget that I’d have plenty of time, as much as I wanted,
because the artificial heart would be continually pumping
away alongside the operating-table, keeping the brain alive.
      
“Now, let’s assume that I’ve succeeded in peeling off your
skull and removing everything else that surrounds the sides of
the brain. That leaves it connected to the body only at the
base, mainly by the spinal column and by the two large veins and
the four arteries that are supplying it with blood. So what next?
      
“I would sever the spinal column just above the first cervical
vertebra, taking great care not to harm the two vertebral
arteries which are in that area. But you must remember that
the dura or outer covering is open at this place to receive the
spinal column, so I’d have to close this opening by sewing the
edges of the dura together. There’d be no problem there.
      
“At this point, I would be ready for the final move. To one
side, on a table, I’d have a basin of a special shape, and this
would be filled with what we call Ringer’s Solution. That is a
special kind of fluid we use for irrigation in neurosurgery. I
would now cut the brain completely loose by severing the
supply