HANDBOOK OF PHYSIOLOGY 



NEUROPHYSIOLOGY I 



FIG. 3. Rene Descartes and his concept of the pineal gland. The photograph is from the portrait 

 by Franz Hals in the Louvre, and the diagram is taken from de la Forge, Louis. Traili de I' Esprit 

 de I'Homme, de ses Facultez, de ses Fonclions, et de son Union avec le Corps. SuiranI les principes de Mr. 

 Descartes. Geneva : Bousquet, 1725. 



village of Egmond in liberal Holland, though even 

 here he could not entirely escape lieing hounded by 

 bigots. The mistake he made that the world regrets 

 was to leave a milieu so congenial to his philosophic 

 nature for the cold of Sweden and the exacting de- 

 mands of Queen Christina. There, within a year, he 

 died. His striking face with the intelligent eyes and 

 quizzical eyebrow has been preserved for us in the 

 fine portrait by Franz Hals that hangs in the Loux-re. 

 A great man has many lives' written about him 

 but those set down by his contemporaries usually 

 have a special flavor. In the case of Descartes, the 

 short account of his life and his philosophy written 

 by Borel (23) (the inicroscopist) in 1669 gi\es one the 

 feeling of bridging the centuries. Borel gives a list of 

 the manuscripts found in Stockholm at Descartes's 

 death in 1650, including the early treatise he wrote 

 on music when he was only 22. Several of his letters 

 were found, some of which Borel reproduces. The 

 letters date from 1632 and give an intimate glimp.se of 

 the struggle Descartes had to face in overcoming re- 

 sistance to his theories among some of his con- 

 temporaries. 



23. Borel, Pierre (1620- 1689). Vitae Renati Cartesii, Summt 

 Philosophi Compendium. Frankfurt: Sigismund, 1676. 



* "It is an error to suppose the soul supplies the body with 

 its heat and its movements." Passions de I'Ame, Article 5. 



Descartes (24, 25), having become convinced that 

 in mathematics lay the tool for a unified theory of all 

 science, had now to explain its role in physiology. It 

 followed logically that the animal body and all its 

 workings was a machine, the operation of this machine 

 being directed from a control tower. In the brain with 

 its bilateral development, the singly represented 

 pineal body was chosen by Descartes to play this 

 master role and (in man) it was given the added 

 responsibility of housing the soul. In the concept of 

 the body as a machine, energized not by an iniina- 

 terial aninia* but by the external world impinging on 

 it, lies a germ of the idea of reflex activity. 



To coming generations of neurophysiologists Des- 

 cartes bequeathed the notion that impressions from 

 the external world were conveyed by material animal 

 spirits to the ventricles and there directed by the 

 pineal gland into those outgoing tubular nerves that 

 could carry them to the part of the body the subse- 

 quent action of which would be the appropriate one. 

 In animals this was presumed to be a purely mechani- 

 cal action, but in man the soul, resident in the pineal, 

 could have soine say in the direction taken by this 



24. Descartes, Rene (1596-1650). Passioru de fAnie. 

 .-\msterdam, 1649. 



25. Descartes, R. De homine figuris, et latinate donatur a 

 Florentio Schuyl, posthumous Latin version by Schuyl. 

 Leyden: Moyardum & Leffen, 1662; first French edition, 

 Traile de I'Homme, 1664; second French edition, 1677. 



