[The beginnings of physiology of the human brain, from antiquity to the Renaissance].
For more than 3,000 years in Western civilizations, the knowledge of the human body gained very little ground at first, due to taboos. The body was regarded as sacred and Medicine only resorted to plants in order to heal. Hippocrates was not familiar with anatomy as the human body could not be dissected. He developed a theory of humors connected with the primary elements and opposing the dry and the moist. Even though he did not know the nervous system, he nonetheless pointed out that emotions stemmed from the brain and were caused ty particles (pneuma) emitted by the objects around us. Galien was one of the first to mention physiology but could only dissect animals to understand Man. He took up the theory of humors but did not reach any concrete results as he considered the brain as made up of faeces. Only in 1000 AD did Avicenne try to shape the cell theory with its three cells (the ventricles in today's parlance) in direct relation to the nerves, which he described but did not represent. Representation of the nerves was only be given in the mid-13th century by Khalifah in his ophtalmology treaty. Finally, during the Renaissance, when books started conveying both text and pictures, brain physiology emerged; Albert le Grand was its first expounder and his work was then taken up in a 1475 inculabulum in which 5 cells instead of 3 are described and represented. Leonardo da Vinci was the second one; at the end of the 15th century he dissected may corpses to understand human morphology. Unfortunately his work, which was conducted very rigorously from an anatomical point of view only surfaced at the end of the 19th century. He was the first to conduct the anatomical cross-dissection of the brain. Last came Magnus Hundt and Georg Reisch; in the early 16th century they still represented the three cells of Avicenne even though Reisch described more sophisticated connections between the organs of the senses.
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Museum national d'histoire naturelle, Paris.
D001921:Brain; D049690:History, Ancient; D049692:History, Early Modern 1451-1600; D049691:History, Medieval; D009482:Neurophysiology / Q000266:history*
Les prémices de la physiologie du cerveau humain, de l'antiquité à la Renaissance.