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Metaphor, Analogy and the Brain in the Work of Thomas Willis

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Metaphor, Analogy and the Brain in the Work of Thomas Willis A love of ‘words as words’: metaphor, analogy and the brain in the work of Thomas Willis (1621 - 1675) Rebecca O’Neal A thesis submitted to Queen Mary, University of London, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Department of History and Centre for the History of the Emotions 1 Statement of Originality I, Rebecca O’Neal, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: Rebecca O’Neal Date: 23rd March 2017 2 Abstract Thomas Willis is commonly used as a touchstone for the modern brain sciences: his Cerebri anatome (1664) is celebrated as having placed the brain on its ‘modern footing,’ while Willis is referred to as the ‘founding father’ of neuroscience. Driven by a set of present-centred and medically orientated concerns, great emphasis has traditionally been placed upon Willis’s neuro-anatomy as a precursor to our own ways of thinking about the ‘neurological brain’. Such approaches have tended to neglect Willis’s broader theoretical contributions, particularly his physiological theories, or have failed to consider how (distinctly early modern) concepts around the soul informed Willis’s interpretation of the anatomical brain. This thesis re-examines Willis through his use of metaphors and analogies, exploring the relationship between his use of language and his physical practices around the brain (dissection, chemical experiment). Although recent scholarship on Willis has turned to social or cultural history approaches, there has yet to be a detailed examination of Willis’s use of language. Ideas around the appropriate use of metaphor and analogy in scientific writing have long informed responses to Willis. His credibility has been undermined by suggestions of theoretical embellishment and imaginative speculation – charges that necessarily pick up on the use of analogical reasoning. In contrast, this thesis argues that Willis’s concept of the brain cannot be viewed independently of the ways in which it was described and represented: rather than mere ornaments, metaphor and analogy were an essential part of Willis’s conceptual architecture and tools by which the brain (as an object of knowledge) was made to exist in the world. Willis’s use of language embeds his knowledge within a specific set of intellectual, cultural and material contexts of the late seventeenth century. His ideas around the brain cannot, therefore, be straightforwardly appropriated as part of our own understanding of neurology. 3 Table of Contents Title page 1 Abstract 3 Table of contents 4 Acknowledgments 5 Introduction 6 Chapter One: Metaphor, Analogy and Rhetoric in the Seventeenth century 52 Chapter Two: The Internal Laboratory: Chemical Ferments and the Brain 97 Chapter Three: The Unfolded Brain: New Methodologies and the Rhetoric of Practice 137 Chapter Four: The Cloistered Brain and the Clockwork Cerebellum 172 Chapter Five: The Soul of Brutes: Parts, Powers and Passions 211 Conclusion 251 Bibliography 261 4 Acknowledgements Expressing how I feel about the people in my life does not come especially easily to me; which is perhaps ironic, considering that I have been fortunate enough to find myself working among so many leading scholars of the emotions. Please forgive me any awkward phrasing; it belies a far deeper sense of gratitude. In no particular order, I would like to offer my sincere thanks to my supervisors Thomas Dixon and Elena Carrera for their careful guidance, support and intellectual inspiration. You have both encouraged me and given me the confidence I needed to see this project through. I must also thank Mark Jenner for giving so much of his time to help me articulate the concept for the thesis – and for recommending I get in touch with a certain Chris Millard. Thank you to the Wellcome Trust for their generous financial support and to the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary for awarding me the grant and providing a stimulating and supportive research environment. I must also thank Rhodri Hayward and Miri Rubin for a helpful upgrade. My special thanks to Joanna Wharton for her friendship, thoughtful discussions (and numerous proof-reads) during my time at York - I hope we will get around to that collaboration. My thanks to the community at Queen Mary: Jen Wallis, Sarah Crook, Lisa Renken, Elle Betts, Craig Griffiths and Åsa Jansson for their thoughtful suggestions and their wonderful, valuable friendships. My gratitude and thanks to The Rushton (Lizzie, Matthew, Natty and Lucas) and to my wonderful parents in-law David and Judith Millard for all their love, friendship and support. My love, thanks and sincere gratitude to my parents, Hugh O’Neal and Suzanne Loverseed and my extended family for their essential support through the significant life- events that have occurred during the writing of this thesis. I could not have done it without you. Finally, but by no means least, to my husband Chris Millard, without whose tireless support and intellectual inspiration none of this would have been possible. You challenged me to take my work and myself seriously. Above all, you have shown me happiness. Thank you. 5 Introduction Thomas Willis, Neuroscience and History Thomas Willis was once regarded as the most successful English physician of his day. A contemporary, Anthony Wood, noted that Willis had become ‘so noted, and so infinitely resorted to, for his practice, that never any physician before went beyond him, or got more money yearly than he’.1 Despite his many notable achievements, Willis now stands as a relatively marginal and poorly understood figure in the history of medicine. As Michael Hawkins has remarked, Willis appears ‘only in passing’ in most histories of medicine and science.2 His contributions are nevertheless frequently invoked within the modern field of neurology, where Willis is widely recognised by medical students on account of the arterial network at the base of the brain bearing his name, ‘The Circle of Willis.’ Today, his works are predominantly read and written about by retired neurologists, who frequently invoke Willis as a ‘founding father’ of the modern discipline.3 This position is reflected in medical histories around the study of the brain and nerves: in 2007, historian George J. Rousseau noted that Willis ‘invented the concept of a ‘nervous system.’4 In the same year, C. U. M Smith wrote that those looking for the birth of modern neurology would do well to begin with Willis’s Cerebri Anatome. This was, he felt, a ‘most obvious’ starting point.5 Willis’s positioning as a rhetorical anchor for the modern neurosciences is perhaps the single most prominent theme in the body of literature surrounding him. This belies what is actually a rather fractured and controversial historical picture. Prior to the 1960s, there was a steady, if unremarkable, amount of interest around Willis; following the tercentennial of Cerebri anatome in 1964, the period witnessed a marked 1 Anthony Wood, Athenae oxonienses, (London: Printed for Tho. Bennet, 1691-2), vol. 3, p. 1051. 2 Michael J. Hawkins, The Empire of Passions: Thomas Willis’s anatomy of the Restoration Soul (PhD Thesis: University of London, 2004), p. 1. 3 William Feindel notably repeated the ‘founding father’ epithet in his introduction to Thomas Willis’s, The Anatomy of the Brain and Nerves, tercentenary edition (1664-1964), ed. by William Feindel, 2 vols. (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1965). A number of neurologists and clinicians have published studies on Willis: Sir Charles Sherrington (1940); Alfred Meyer and Raymond Heirons (1965); Hansruedi Isler (1968); Kenneth Dewhurst (1982); M.J. Eadie (2002); Mark Wilson (2012). 4 George S. Rousseau, “Brainomania’: Brain, Mind and Soul in the Long Eighteenth Century’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 30. 2 (June, 2007), pp. 161-191 (p. 171). 5 C.U.M. Smith, ‘Brain and Mind in the Long 18th century,’ in Brain, Mind and Medicine: Essays in 18th Century Neuroscience, ed. by H. Whitaker and others (New York: Springer, 2007), p. 15. 6 expansion of interest in and a certain ‘rediscovery’ of his works by medical historians.6 A little before this in the 1940s, the eminent British neurophysiologist Sir Charles Sherrington commented favourably on Willis noting that he had ‘practically refounded the anatomy and physiology of the brain and nerves.’7 This was a recovery of much earlier assessments, such as by John Friend who, in 1725, had acknowledged Willis as ‘the first inventor of the nervous system.’8 These comments reflected the fact that Willis had been the first to use the term ‘neurologia’ (translated into the English ‘neurologie’ in 1681) to describe the study of the structure of the brain and nerves as a self-contained system, which he had termed the ‘doctrine of the nerves’.9 Although this ‘doctrine of the nerves’ did not specifically address physiology and pathology (which were dealt with by Willis in a later book), our conception of the modern discipline of clinical neuroscience assumes the inclusion of these elements when we refer to his ‘neurology’.
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