Journal of the History of the Neurosciences最新文献

The medieval cell doctrine was a series of related psychological models based on ancient Greco-Roman ideas in which cognitive faculties were assigned to "cells," typically corresponding to the cerebral ventricles. During Late Antiquity and continuing during the Early Middle Ages, Christian philosophers attempted to reinterpret Aristotle's De Anima, along with later modifications by Herophilos and Galen, in a manner consistent with religious doctrine. The resulting medieval cell doctrine was formulated by the fathers of the early Christian Church in the fourth and fifth centuries. Printed images of the doctrine that appeared in medical, philosophical, and religious works, beginning with "graphic incunabula" at the end of the fifteenth century, extended and evolved a manuscript tradition that had been in place since at least the eleventh century. Some of these early psychological models just pigeonholed the various cognitive faculties in different non-overlapping bins within the brain (albeit without any clinicopathologic evidence supporting such localizations), while others specifically promoted or implied a linear sequence of events, resembling the process of digestion. By the sixteenth century, printed images of the doctrine were usually linear three-cell versions with few exceptions having four or five cells. Despite direct challenges by Massa and Vesalius in the sixteenth century, and Willis in the seventeenth century, the doctrine saw its most elaborate formulations in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries with illustrations by the Paracelsan physicians Bacci and Fludd. Overthrow of the doctrine had to await abandonment of Galenic cardiovascular physiology from the late-seventeenth to early-eighteenth centuries.

This article presents a collection of previously overlooked, stereotyped, abstract, anatomical representations of the olfactory bulbs and tracts that were printed as part of schematic woodcuts of the medieval cell doctrine, generally in the early-sixteenth century but extending into the seventeenth century and, in at least one case, to the mid-nineteenth century. A representation of the olfactory bulbs is incorporated into many of these woodcuts, beginning with an illustration by German physician, philosopher, and theologian Magnus Hundt in 1501 in his Antropologium, which showed central projections of the two olfactory bulbs joining in the meshwork of the rete mirabile. German physician and anatomist Johann Eichmann, known as Johannes Dryander, modified Hundt's figure for his own monograph in 1537 but retained the representation of the olfactory bulbs. In 1503, German Carthusian humanist writer Gregor Reisch published an influential and highly copied woodcut in his Margarita philosophica, showing connections from the olfactory bulbs overlying the bridge of the nose (as well as from other special sense organs) to the sensus communis in the anterior cell or ventricle. In the following centuries, numerous authors derived similar figures from Reisch's original schematic illustration of the medieval cell doctrine, including Brunschwig (1512, 1525), Głogowczyk (1514), Romberch/Host (1520), Leporeus/Le Lièvre (1520, 1523), Dolce (1562), Lull/Bernardus de Lavinheta (1612), and Elliotson (1835). Similar representations were provided by Peyligk (1518) and Eck (1520). These stereotyped schematic images linked the olfactory bulbs to olfaction before the advent of more realistic images beginning in the mid-sixteenth century.

Of the early-sixteenth century pre-Vesalian anatomists, Magnus Hundt in 1501 and Johannes Eichmann (known as Johann Dryander) in 1537 both attempted to summarize the anatomy of the head and brain in a single complex figure. Dryander clearly based his illustration on the earlier one from Hundt, but he made several improvements, based in part on Dryander's own dissections. Whereas Hundt's entire monograph was medieval in character, Dryander's monograph was a mixture of medieval and early-modern frameworks; nevertheless, the corresponding illustrations of the anatomy of the head and brain in Hundt (1501) and Dryander (Dryandrum 1537) were both essentially medieval. This article examines in detail the symbology of both illustrations within the context of the medieval framework for neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. These two woodcuts of the head and brain provide the most detailed pictorial representation of medieval cranial anatomy in a printed book prior to the work of Andreas Vesalius in 1543.

A mnemonic couplet to help students learn the names of the cranial nerves has been in use in the United States since the mid-nineteenthth century. The original in iambic tetrameter is attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Using a systematic search, more than 40 variants have been identified and, where possible, ordered in time. Variations depended in part on evolving preferred names for individual cranial nerves, regional geographic features, and idiosyncratic choices. Some inferior variants ignored critical features of the original (e.g., meter, number of poetic feet, or even the rhyme). Others strove to have a memorable couplet with the basic features of the original but without resorting to disparaging phrases. However, with the modern names for the cranial nerves, few of the extant versions of the mnemonic make sense, or preserve iambic tetrameter and rhyme, while avoiding derogatory or lewd expressions. Two new versions are suggested that meet these constraints.