Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is no laughing matter. Unless you’re an indomitable Gaul, that is. In the best-selling Asterix comic books, Asterix, Obelix, and their compatriots, fuelled by magic potion, dish out blows to the heads of Romans, pirates and even extraterrestrials. Perhaps not surprisingly (it is a comic book), the victims of these severe assaults appear to suffer no long term ill effects.
Marcel Kamp and colleagues at Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf cataloged over 700 head injuries in Asterix comic books, analyzing their epidemiology and risk factors. In a recently published paper the researchers report that the major cause of head injury was assault, they say, perpetrated in the vast majority of cases by Gauls—more than half by either Asterix or Obelix. Only 4.5 percent ...
