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If We Only Knew Then... by Gary Trotta |
 Here we are looking at evidence of trepanning also known as trephination (making a burr hole in the skull as a medical intervention used to treat health problems related to intracranial diseases). What's of interest here is that this skull has been found in prehistoric human remains and date back to the stone age 9500 BC. Who knew, brain surgeon cave men!
It is interesting how our knowledge base on all subjects is refined through the ages, but it is definitely not a straight line progression. Science didn't really have it right about how our brains function until, well, now, or at least we think we have it right.
The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans believed that the seat of the mind was located in the heart rather than in the head. Aristotle (384 to 322 BC – 62 years of age) believed that one of the main functions of the brain was to cool the blood in the body, a kind of automobile radiator theory I guess. According to this magnificent Greek scholar, "the excrementitious evaporation, when carried up by the heat to the region of the brain, is condensed into a 'phlegm' while that evaporation which is nutrient and not unwholesome, becoming condensed, descends and cools the hot."
In addition, Aristotle put forth that "For, as has been observed elsewhere, sleep comes on when the corporeal element conveyed upwards by the hot, along the veins, to the head. But when that which has been thus carried up can no longer ascend, but is too great in quantity, it forces the hot back again and flows downwards. Hence it is that men sink down [as they do in sleep] when the heat which tends to keep them erect is withdrawn; and this, when it befalls them, causes unconsciousness, and afterwards fantasy." So in summation, when you get to hot in the head, you fall asleep and dream. That sounds right, doesn't it?
Around the time of Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519), it was supposed that the essence of the brain was found within the ventricles of the brain. We all have holes in our head, and as the natal neural tube develops into the brain, the neural tube itself transforms itself into those very holes, filled with cerebrospinal fluid. Leonardo injected hot wax into the brain of an ox, resulting in the first mold of the brain's ventricles. The ventricular system, we now know, is comprised of four ventricles:
* right and left lateral ventricles
* third ventricle
* fourth ventricle
I don't know where the first and second ventricles went to, but that's the way it is. Anyhow, each lateral ventricle (one within each hemisphere) extends from the front of the brain ( the frontal lobe), back to the occipital lobe in the back of your brain. Leonardo, somewhat misled by the thinking passed down through the ages, put forth drawings depicting the ventricles as three nutshell like chambers. The first (in the front of the brain) was where the senses converged; the sensus communis. Actually this "Common Sense" term originates with Aristotle. From here all is transported to the middle chamber for processing, and finally to the last chamber to be stored as memory. So here we are in the middle of the Renaissance, and about as far away from truly understanding how our brain works as the ancient Greeks, right! But here is the really fascinating part. Hippocrates (460 – 380 BC), an ancient Greek, living before the time of Aristotle, really did have it right.
"Men ought to know that from nothing else but thence [from the brain] come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. And by this, in an special manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear, and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet and what unsavory. Some we discriminate by habit, and some we perceive by their utility. By this we distinguish objects of relish and disrelish, according to the seasons; and the same things do not always please us. And by the same organ we become mad and delirious, and fears and terrors assail us, some by night, and some by day, and dreams and untimely wanderings, and cares that are not suitable, and ignorance of present circumstances, desuetude, and unskilfulness. All these things we endure from the brain".
Hippocrates, our Father of Medicine, stated that thoughts, ideas, and feelings come from the brain and not the heart. He authored the first book on Epilepsy (On the Sacred Disease) , demystifying and refuting the idea that this dreaded disease, was a curse or a prophetic punishment.
Perhaps to summarize:
Isaac Singer - "Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge."
Charles Morgan - "As knowledge increases, wonder deepens." And finally,
Bertrand Russell - "In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."
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