Anatomy of the Brain

Besides the assistance brought by his most skilled hand in dissecting, it is not proper to conceal how much I have received in addition from those most distinguished men, Mr. Thomas Millington, Doctor of Medicine, and also Mr. Christopher Wren, Doctor of Laws and Savilian Professor of Astronomy: both of whom were accustomed to be present frequently at our dissections and to confer about the reasons for the functions of the parts. Furthermore, the former, a most learned man, to whom I privately proposed my observations and conjectures day by day, often confirmed me with his votes when I was uncertain in my mind and less confident in my own opinion. Moreover, the latter, that most illustrious man Dr. Wren, because of his singular kindness, was not troubled to delineate with his most learned hands many figures of the Brain and Skull, so that the work might be more exact.

Although, however, instructed by these safeguards and surrounded by these illustrious men as if by auxiliary forces, I step into the arena; yet it is not right that I should presume myself safe from calumnies, nor indeed immune to blame and most just reproach: for here an inquiry is made into the recesses and inner chambers of the Brain, and its parts and appendix, as if it were a sealed cloister; concerning the functions of which it might scarcely be easy to bring forward anything that could not be criticized and torn apart by the carping of the malevolent, just as it might be refined and advanced by the judgments of the more learned. In other parts, where all things are placed at the discretion of the senses, we do not so easily stumble into errors. For indeed, in most viscera and vessels, the things that are proper to them, or