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A Handsome Brain

By loom on July 9, 2007.

Larry Moran passes on the rules of the game: go to the Wellcome Library's new image bank and find your favorite scientific image. Here's my pick: the first good picture of the brain, drawn by Christopher Wren in 1664 for Thomas Willis, the first neurologist. (More on Willis and Wren here.)


i-20c0977c2f8895e7d2ae33f4129c72ca-wellcome brain.jpg

[Credit: Wellcome Institute, Creative Commons License.]

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Brains

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Ah, no wonder the image looked familiar. I remember seeing it in Soul Made Flesh!
I'm glad I still remember SOME things, seeing how I read the book a bit more than a year ago.

Yes, I recognize this too having just finished Soul Made Flesh yesterday. How I wish I had read this great piece of history before visiting Oxford. I could have imagined the smell of putrid flesh, the sounds of tortured dogs, and the first cracked open, closely inspected brains and made my visit much more interesting! Were any of Wren's buildings inspired by the brain (beside, of course, his own)?