Dr. Thomas Willis, the Oxford Boys, and The Discovery of the Brain

  

It may come a surprise to most people, but once upon a time no one really cared much about the Brain. 

We already have it on good authority that even the famed ritual mummifiers of ancient Egypt, those early masters of the anatomical arts, would often yank out the poor organ and toss it in the trash heap while preserving more valuable viscera like the Liver, the Lungs, Stomach, the Intestines and above all the Heart.

It wasn't until about the 17th century that someone actually paid close attention to the workings of the brain - a physician by the name of Thomas Willis.  His discovery was not made in isolation, for he was surrounded by some of the best and brightest of his age - names like John Locke (mostly known for his political writings - incidentally also a physician), the scientist Robert Boyle (come on Chemists.. Boyle's Law Ring a Bell?), as well as polymath and architect Christopher Wren who built St. Paul's Catherdral in the heart of London.

And they worked all this out while Trapped in Oxford..... because of a Raging Civil War between the supporters of the Stuart Monarchy versus the increasingly radicalized "puritanical" Round-Hounds, so called because they had short hair, that would eventually support the commoner-general Oliver Cromwell's act of regicide and declaration of Commonwealth.

So you've got one crazy explosive political situation that also happens to overlap with an increasingly strident sectarian debate about the nature of religion, society, and morality (translation: Lots of People Running Around Trying to Re-Write the Rules by Which Society worked) on top of what Dr. Willis and his friends were trying to accomplish.

Want a good quick read about the subject?  Check out the book up top, Soul Made Flesh by the science journalist Carl Zimmer.  I promise you, if you like situations such as the one described above, the book will be a very easy read.

But a few relevant things to chew on for those who don't have the time:

This was really the first case in history where a concerted effort was made by the think-tank par excellence of the era to actively investigate the workings of the Mind and the "mechanical aspects" of the Brain.  

At the heart of the tale lays this mere son of a local farmer, whose dissections exposed the Great Nerve Tracts to and from the Brain as well as the very basics of Neuroanatomy.

And yes..  Thomas Willis is where we get the name for the "Circle of Willis" - the arterial supply to the brain below.

This was also the time period when Willis, Locke, et al. did what every good Empiricist does - Experiment....by strapping down Dogs to dissecting tables and opening them up to explore things like the circulation of the blood, the effects of removing certain organs from the body, etc. etc.

Sounds pretty bad right?  But the information they gathered is essentially Knowledge that we in our modern era take for granted.

This was the dawning of a new age, a "Neurocentric" age that displaced older notions of the Heart as the Seat of our Preceptions and Cognitions. 

This was the Birth of Neuroscience.