[Importance of the brain in body-soul discussion from the history of medicine perspective].
Since the earliest time medicine has considered our intellectual-psychic abilities in relationship to organs and substrata. Originally blood and its presumptive production resp. depot organs liver and heart acted as soul carriers. Gradually the brain obtained superiority in the body-soul-discussion and during the course of development nearly any structure of the brain was taken into consideration as seat of the soul and the sensorium commune. In the meantime the unity of body and soul never has been controversial among the former medical authors. Since the central nervous system took place of the blood vascular system already at an early time it follows that the brain equally in past and present passed for the material form of our intellectual-psychic abilities. It is true, today we renounce to speak in the body-soul-discussion of single structures of the brain--this has been done intensively and extensively for us by the searchers in former times--, but we still follow the old localisation concept perceiving in the brain and its estimated hundred milliards of nerve cells the unimaginable complex organ that offers the substratum for our intellectual-psychic abilities. Much is not yet realized. But: The genetic material was up to the present a "black box". Today light is fallen in. The efforts concerning this light incidence into the "black box" of the brain must be continued in favour of a successful restorative neurotransplantation.
Benedum
J
J
Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Justus-Liebig-Universität, Giessen.
D016380:Brain Tissue Transplantation / Q000266:history*; D016332:Fetal Tissue Transplantation / Q000266:history*; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D010686:Philosophy, Medical / Q000266:history*; D011603:Psychophysiology / Q000266:history*
Der Stellenwert des Gehirns in der Leib-Seele-Diskussion aus medizinisch-historischer Perspektive.