Most were male, many Roman and more than half were attacked by Asterix and Obelix themselves ... medical academics get their heads around violence in the Asterix comics

By Toutatis! A group of academics have analysed the traumatic brain injuries in the Asterix comics, identifying 704 head injury victims in the 34 books.

A paper published in the European Journal of Neurosurgery, Acta Neurochirurgica, examines the much-loved books in detail, discovering that of the 704 victims, 698 were male and 63.9% were Roman. One hundred and twenty were Gauls, 59 were bandits or pirates, 20 were Goths, 14 were Normans, eight were Vikings, five were Britons and four were extraterrestrials.

The majority of injuries were caused by the indomitable Gauls (87.1%), with Asterix and his large sidekick Obelix themselves responsible for more than half (57.6%). Only 32 head injuries were caused by Romans, write the researchers, led by Marcel A Kamp from Heinrich Heine University, and just one by a pirate. Although 70.5% of the victims were wearing a helmet, this was lost "in the vast majority of cases", while "a doping agent called 'the magic potion'" was found to have been taken by the perpetrators of 83% of the injuries. "This substance contained mistletoe and was believed to give superhuman strength. In fact, characters who took the magic potion before traumata caused significantly more severe traumatic brain injuries," the academics discovered. They note that a component of mistletoe, lectin, has been shown to have effects on brain tumours, but say that its role in the treatment of traumatic brain injuries "needs to be clarified by further studies".

Using signs such as "raccoon eyes" – periorbital ecchymoses – or an "outstretched and sideward-pointing tongue" (paresis of the hypoglossal nerve) to identify traumatic brain injury, and ranking the seriousness of the injuries on the standard Glasgow coma scale, they found that in 696 cases the damage was caused by blunt force, while strangulation led to eight cases of head injury.

There were 390 cases of "severe trauma", 89 of "moderate trauma" and 225 of "mild trauma", but fortunately for the Roman legionaries "who garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium" around Asterix's small village, there were no cases in which injuries caused death or permanent damage. "Neurological deficits with aphasia and disorientation persisted longest in a case of a massive force on to the head of the druid Getafix and lasted for a period of several days to a couple of months," the researchers wrote. "However, in general, all symptoms of traumatic brain injury usually improved within a few minutes or hours."

The paper concludes, in admirably deadpan fashion, that "the favourable outcome ... is astonishing, since outcome of traumatic brain injuries in the ancient world is believed to have been worse than today and also since no diagnostic or therapeutic procedures were performed".

Karl Schaller, a neurosurgeon at the University of Geneva, commended the authors for their "stimulating analysis", noting particularly the issue of absent helmets.

"The role of helmet protection has been stressed by the authors, especially in view of the fact that strap-fixation should have been taken more seriously by the Roman besiegers and others," he said. "It would be interesting to compare the results from this comprehensive review of reported head injuries in all Asterix volumes with those of more recent heroes such as the Ducks or the Pink Panther and others, and to look at it with a possible transatlantic perspective. As this will have to wait, we are all reminded to keep our straps tightly fastened."