1. INTRODUCTION 



"Son sie"ge au milieu de parties tres-importantes de 1'ence"- 

 phale, sa Constance chez rhomme et le vertebres, font pourtant 

 pn'sumer que ses usages, s'ils ne sont pas d'un ordre aussi impor- 

 tant qu'on le supposait a Tepoque des Esprits Vitaux, n'en sont 

 pas moins r6els et tres-interessant a connaitre." 



Legros. These de Paris, 1873, page 24. 



"Vix ulla unquam corporis nostri particula tantam famam 

 inter eruditos non modo, sed etiam inter illiterates nacta est, ac 

 cerebri sic dicta glandula pinealis.'' These words written by 

 Soemmering 359 in 1785 still hold true. Not only did this organ 

 attract much early medical attention, but its reputation \\.-is 

 extended by the metaphysicians and even further increased by 

 the satirical literature of an uncommonly virile period. Descartes 

 (1649) 89 in his discourse on the sources of the human passions, 

 expressed the belief that the pineal body was the seat of the soul. 

 This interpretation passed current during the epoch of Vital 

 Spirits. It did not, however, go altogether unassailed. Voltaire 411 

 so successfully made it the subject of parody that his whim- 

 sical conception of the pineal body became more influential than 

 the origina hypothesis of Descartes. According to Voltaire, 

 the epiphysis should be regarded as the driver which, by means of 

 two nerve bands, guides the action of the cerebral hemispheres. 

 These nerve bands were long referred to by the anatomists as 

 "the reins of the soul." 



During the past hundred years an increasing volume of re- 

 search has revealed the difficulties in the epiphyseal problem 

 and shown how far we are from a solution of it. In fact, the 

 views advanced by the students of this subject are so numerous 

 and often so divergent that any decision at the present time 



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