How the secrets of the brain were uncovered in 17th century England? We take it for granted that the brain is the seat of our minds, the part of our body that is most ourselves. 500 years ago, Europeans, if they thought about the brain at all, took it much less seriously - whether it was a refrigerator or a pump, it was seen as little more than a mechanism, its only products tears and snot. Among the revolutions of the seventeenth century was a revolution on the understanding of the brain and mind. It's central figure was a 17th century Englishman called Thomas Willis. To him, we owe our modern understanding of the miracle that is the human brain, the first dissections of the skull and the word 'psychology'. Zimmer's new book tells Willis' story against the background of Civil War, regicide and Restoration. Set in London and Oxford, we see the context of Willis' researches and dissections, meet his famous friends, the founders of the Royal Society, Boyle, Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren, who attended Willis' dissections and sketched the results. Few stories in the history of science are as important and fascinating - and as little-known - as this one. Carl Zimmer writes the monthly essay in the US magazine "Natural History", having inherited this position from Stephen Jay Gould.
| ISBN | 0099441659 | | Pages | 320 | | ISBN13 | 9780099441656
(What's this?) | | Weight (grammes) | 266 | | Publisher | Cornerstone | | Published in | London | | Imprint | Arrow Books Ltd | | Height (mm) | 198 | | Format | Paperback | | Width (mm) | 127 | | Publication date | 03 Mar 2005 | | Spine width (mm) | 25 | | DEWEY | 612.8209 | | Academic level | General | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | |
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Chapter One Hearts and Minds, Livers and Stomachs
Thomas Willis was not the first person to take the brain out of its skull. The oldest records of the procedure come from ancient Egypt, four thousand years ago. The Egyptian priests who performed it did not hold up the brain and praise its power, however. Instead, they snaked a hook up the nose of the cadaver, broke through the eggshell-thin ethmoid bone, fished out the brain shred by shred until the skull was empty, and then packed the empty space with cloth. (read more)
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