Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain—and How It Changed the World (2005)

Ostensibly about Thomas Willis, a 17th century physician and anatomist, and his discovery of the the brain as the seat of intelligence and the 'command center' of the rest of the body, the book actually documents what is essentially the transition from 'natural philosophy' to 'science'. It centers on Oxford in the mid 17th century and the extraordinary men who working there, men who were willing to discard centuries of accepted wisdom about the natural world, including medicine, in favor of doing actual experiments to discover how things, including the human body, actually worked. Unlike Willis, many of these men did not limit themselves to medicine, and the list of them reads like a who's who of 17th C science, philosophy, and of all things, architecture! The cast, besides Willis, includes: Descartes, Hobbes, Boyle, Vesalius, Paracelsus, Harvey, Hooke, Locke, Wallis, Ward, Wilkins, Wren, Sydenham, and many others.

The ferment of ideas in this period is extraordinary and Zimmer does an excellent job in summarizing them and tying them together, showing how discoveries in one 'area', like chemistry, affected other in other 'areas', like medicine (though these men certainly had not conceived of our modern 'areas' of science like chemistry and physics), and how these discoveries both were influenced by, and influenced in turn, the way we view the world around us.

Zimmer's centerpiece is Willis' investigations into the brain and nerves, and he argues that his discoveries essentially presaged much of modern neurology, limited mostly by Willis' lack of knowledge of electricity. He further argues that these discoveries had a profound effect on how we viewed sickness and health, and how we understand 'the soul'.

I want to spend a second taking issue with some comments by another reviewer: First, because Willis is not generally as well known as some of the other scientists described here does not mean his importance has been overstated. Zimmer's arguments that his discoveries changed how we look at the body and world are compelling, even if most of the world has forgotten where the discoveries originated. Second, I don't think that people feel relief just because they find out that mental illness is treatable; whether treatable or not, patients are often relieved to find out that their illness has a rational basis, that we can put a label on it, and describe why it is happening. It relieves them to know that they are not just 'crazy'. Third, to paraphrase Mozart in 'Amadeus', the book is precisely as long as it needs to be to get Zimmer's points across. It does not ramble, it is not repetitious, and is just plain interesting from beginning to end.

For all students of science and history, this is a wonderful book and is well worth your time. ( )

An interesting book on early research into the brain focusing primarily on the work of Thomas Willis and his 'circle'. While it took me a couple of chapters to really get involved with this book it turned out to be interesting not just for the work on the brain but for the information about the practice of medicine in the 1600's and how our ideas about the human soul have changed over time.
Recommended.

This is the story of Thomas Willis, who in the seventeenth century was the first to understand (or, at least, to conjecture) the importance of the brain as the body's control center. At the same time, the book follows the tumultuous history of England and other experiments by Willis's circle---for example, the study of respiration and blood circulation.

Willis is an interesting character, for while he based his studies on careful dissections of patients (from all classes) and animals, his medical treatments were mostly the same traditional ones---just justified with new logic. He also had to juggle to stay on the right side of the church, which did not like purely mechanistic explanations for reason. Willis proposed that every person has a sensitive soul and a rational soul, both located in the brain but the latter not being material and surviving the body's death.

Zimmer can be a good writer, and there are several interesting stories here. He overstates Willis's importance, but that is to be expected. He claims that people are pleased to learn of depression's physical causes because that means it is separate from the self. He is trying to argue that Willis's separation of the sensitive and rational souls is deeply embedded in modern culture (because we are relieved that depression is a disease of the sensitive soul), and that this false dichotomy---mental versus physical, the self versus the brain---causes grief and confusion. In fact, the real reason for this relief is that it makes depression something treatable. It is still interesting that Willis, being unwilling to accept purely mystical explanations for rationality, was among the first to confront these separations.

More importantly, the book cries out for editing; it should be half as long. ( )

This book is a fascinating history of what the scientific world looked like in the late 1600's. I don't think I ever realized so completely how many of our breakthroughs in medicine and physiology came from “scientists” who were so deeply steeped and interested in alchemy. A great many of these men (few women are mentioned) were the snake-oil salesmen of their day. And, in truth, many of these ideas of spirits and fires and ferments happening in the blood and other organs of the body and not far from the truth, and no more fanciful or magical then some of our own ideas in developmental biology today. (See The Making of the Fittest by Sean B. Carroll, for example.)

Most interesting to me were the descriptions of experiments these practitioners of the medical arts came up with to understand the human body. How does one, for example, prove that the blood circulates in the body? Or that something in the blood (invisible to everyone then as now) was required for life? Fascinating reading by an excellent science writer. ( )

As science progresses, our views about humanity and our place in the world are constantly in flux. This was just as true in history as if is for us today, colorfully illustrated by Carl Zimmer. Following developments stretching back to ancient views on medicine and the human body, through the enlightenment all the way to modern day MRI machines, pulling back the curtain on the brain and the soul. If you hold to old notions of the soul and feel firm in your facts, you'll see that commonly held conventions have changed radically from old ones as science uncovers further natural truths. A decent read for perspective for neuroscience students and lay people alike. ( )