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For those of us old enough to have grown up with the original Star Trek series, Mr. Spock’s Vulcan nerve pinch is a familiar conceit. Here’s a short video compilation of his technique.

I’ve been researching the history of medicine, and according to this fascinating book by Victor Robinson, MD about the history of anesthesia, compression of a patient’s carotid artery to induce unconsciousness before surgery has been a time-tested, if flawed, technique since ancient Greece. In Greek, carotid means drowsiness. In his History of Animals, Aristotle says: “If these veins are pressed externally, men, though not actually choked, become insensible, shut their eyes, and fall flat on the ground.” (18)

And the technique was still being used a thousand years later. A Spanish physician of the Renaissance reports witnessing it:

The carotids or soporales, that is, sleep-producing arteries, are so named because when they are pressed upon or closed in any way we soon go to sleep. This experiment I saw performed by Realdo Colombo in 1544 in Pisa on a young man in the presence of a number of gentlemen, with no less fear on their part than amusement on ours, we giving them to understand that it was done by sorcery. (39)

The Vulcan nerve pinch seems to be more in the shoulder, but the principal does seem similar.