Thomas Willis was born on 27 January 1621 to Thomas Willis (d. 1643) and Rachel Howell (d. 1631). He matriculated at Oxford’s Christ Church in 1638, possibly aiming for a clerical career at first. His interest for medicine was kindled during the Civil War (1642-1651) and he received his Bachelor of medicine in 1646. Willis then practiced medicine in and around Oxford with increasing success and renown, especially after he had been involved in the resuscitation of Ann Green after her failed execution by hanging in December 1650. In 1657, Willis purchased Beam Hall opposite Merton College, where he resided until his departure for London in 1667. When he left, Willis had the largest annual income (£300) of any Oxford physician (Martensen). According to the National Archives’ currency converter, it would have taken a skilled tradesperson living in 1670 almost 12 years to match Willis’s annual income.

Today, Willis is best remembered as the founder of neurology. The circular arteries that supply blood to the brain are still known as the Circle of Willis. Willis was also responsible for the following medical firsts listed by Molnár (p. 333):

Neuroanatomical terms coined by Willis

Anterior commissure | Cerebellar peduncles | Claustrum | Corpus striatum | Inferior
olives (corpora teretia) | Internal capsule | Medullary pyramids | Nervus ophthalmicus
| The word ‘neurology’ | Optic thalamus | Spinal accessory nerve | Stria terminalis
(taenia cornua) | Striatum | Vagus nerve

Pathologies recognized by Willis

Achalasia of the cardia (achalasia of the oesophagus) | Akathisia (restless legs syndrome,
Ekbom’s syndrome) | Symptoms of myasthenia gravis | Paracusis Willisii. Occurs in deaf patients whose hearing improves in the presence of noise, indicating osteosclerosis | Diabetes
mellitus | Abnormalities of the brains of patients with congenital mental retardation
| Unilateral degeneration of the cerebral peduncle in a case of long-standing unilateral
paralysis | Symptoms of malaria | Distinctions between typhoid and puerperal fevers

The library of St John’s College holds all works published by Willis during his lifetime in first or
other early editions. The exhibition showcases several of these books together with letters Willis wrote to a fellow physician. Yet, the exhibition begins with three works that provide some historical context for the works of Thomas Willis.

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An Anatomical Revolution

Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (Basel: Johannes Oporinus, 1555) HB4/Folios.2.3.3

The Flemish physician Andries van Wezel (1514-1564), known by his Latinized name Andreas Vesalius, was born into a wealthy family of medical professionals. He studied Medicine in Paris and Padua before receiving his first appointment on the day of his graduation as chair of surgery and anatomy in Padua (Zampieri et al., p. 2). At the time, dissections were usually undertaken by a surgeon or assistant (sector), while the anatomy professor (lector) read from the latest textbook, Mondino de’ Liuzzi’s Anathomia corporis humani from 1316, and an assistant (ostensor) pointed to the parts of the body mentioned in the text (Zampieri et al., p. 1). By contrast, Vesalius assumed all three roles (lector, sector, and ostensor) when teaching anatomy, an innovation which is emphasised by the frontispiece of De humani corporis fabrica, which shows him dissecting a female body (Zampieri et al., pp. 12-13). He is believed to have been the first professor teaching anatomy this way.

Vesalius’s practical approach demonstrated that ‘Galen never dissected a human body’ and especially the revised second edition of De humani corporis fabrica ‘was based even more on Vesalius’ own observations and departed more markedly from traditional Galenims’ (Zampieri et al., pp. 4, 7). The importance of the over 250 illustrations in Vesalius’s masterpiece in this revolution of anatomy and medicine cannot be overestimated. The collaboration between him and Jan Stefan van Kalkar (c. 1499-c.1546), a Titian pupil, produced ‘the most accurately detailed and solidly rendered images of the human body ever produced, then and for some time after’ (Rifkin and Ackerman, p. 16). The first edition was published in 1543 with an estimated print run of 500-600 copies, which was even exceeded by the second edition from 1555 displayed here (Charles, p. 105). Vesalius pursued the publication of his work with the same diligence as his anatomy and personally travelled to Bern to collaborate with the printer Johannes Oporinus, who was not only highly educated but a former medical student himself and an assistant of Paracelsus in 1527 (Osterer, p. 14).

De humani corporis fabrica changed anatomy and by extension medical research and practice forever with its modern emphasis on observation and practical methodology as opposed to the medieval recitation of traditional knowledge. Without this development, further anatomical developments in the 17th century would not have been possible, including Thomas Willis’s work in neuroanatomy.

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Anatomy at Oxford University

John Speed, Σκελετòς πολυκινητός (Oxford[?], 1630[?]-1640) MS 22

In this autograph treatise, John Speed (1595-1640) describes two skeletons he donated to St John’s College. They were mounted to either side of the north doorway in Archbishop William Laud’s new Inner (or Mathematical) Library, today’s Laudian Library, before being transferred to the University’s Anatomy School about a decade later. Speed’s descriptions are accompanied by several drawings, mostly showing parts of the mounted skeletons. The illustration displayed shows the donated female and male skeletons on either side of the library’s doorway with a dedication to Archbishop Laud in-between. The manuscript’s front paste-down is a drawing of a dissection taking place in an anatomical theatre. It is an almost exact copy of Jacob de Gheyn II’s drawing of Pieter Paaw (1564-1617) lecturing at the University of Leiden (later engraved by Andries Stock).

Hardly anything is known about John Speed, Oxford University’s first anatomy lecturer. The son of the renowned cartographer John Speed (1551/2–1629) was a member of St John’s College (matriculation 1612), but he resigned his fellowship in order to marry in 1624. When Speed arrived in Oxford, the Anatomy School in the Bodleian Quadrangle had not been built yet. Completed in 1619, it may have been used as an ‘osteological museum’ rather than a venue for dissections (Brockliss, p. 313 n121). Indeed, the change from medieval theoretical medicine to early modern practical medicine triggered by Andreas Vesalius appears to have bypassed Oxford University. Due to a lack of facilities and competitive resources, ‘English medical students initially went to the continent in search of a medical degree, above all to Leiden, and then, from 1750, went off to Scotland’ (Brockliss, p. 278).

Nevertheless, the second half of the 17th century witnessed a ‘golden period […], when Oxford physicians influenced physiology and anatomy profoundly’ (Department of Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics). One of those physicians was Thomas Willis. The manner in which he received his medical degree may not raise confidence, as he obtained it ‘[p]artly as a reward for his loyalty to Charles I […] on the recommendation of the royalist regius professor of physick, Thomas Clayton’ (Martensen), but this does not contradict his remarkable medical skills and expertise.

MS 22 is fully digitized and can be viewed at the Digital Bodleian.

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New Technology

Robert Hooke, Micrographia, or, Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses (London: John Martyn, 1667) Z.4.29

Among the protagonists of the ‘golden age’ of medicine and science in 17th-century Oxford was Robert Hooke (1635-1702), ‘the greatest experimental physicist before Faraday’ (Bernal, p. 324). Between 1662 and 1677, Hooke held the post of Curator of Experiments of The Royal Society (Gest, p. 188). In Oxford, he had previously worked together with Christopher Wren, Thomas Willis, and Robert Boyle, who were all among the founding members of the Royal Society in 1660.

In 1665, Hooke published the first illustrated book on microscopy, his seminal Micrographia, which Samuel Pepys called ‘the most ingenious book that I ever read in my life’ (Pepys, p. 18). The book describes sixty observations of mostly biological specimens (Gest, p. 189), including inanimate objects like hair and feathers, and insects like the flea displayed here. The description of cork gave occasion to the first ever biological use of the word ‘cell’. The work also contains ‘the first published depiction of a microorganism, the microfungus Mucor’ (Gest, p. 187). The engravings that make Hooke’s Micrographia so fascinating to this day were based on Hooke’s own drawings (Gest, p. 189).

The microscope as such was relatively new in the 17th century, although it was perhaps more a ‘redescription of an old tool’ than a new invention, as it evolved out of ‘magnifying lenses [that] had been used in scriptoriums and artisans’ workshops for centuries’ (Lawson, p. 25). While Hooke experimented with various instruments, he preferred to work with a microscope consisting of a leather tube with two lenses made by Richard Reeve (Lawson, pp. 24-6). The work involved a lot more than simply placing a specimen under the lens and looking at it from the other end of the tube. Success was determined by a complex arrangement of lenses, lighting, and specimen preparation (Lawson, pp. 27-35). All three elements required experimentation and manipulation to achieve maximum effect. Hooke’s drawings and the ensuing engravings are not the result of a series of single microscope-viewing sessions, but each one is more akin to a collage, as it were, in which the observations from multiple viewing sessions came together (Lawson, p. 35). Since Hooke worked together with Christopher Wren in the 1650s, when he produced the engravings for Thomas Willis, the resemblance between the engravings in Micrographia and those in Willis’s Cerebri anatome is no coincidence (Lawson, p. 38).

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The Brain Dissected

Thomas Willis, Cerebri anatome (London: James Flesher, John Martyn, and James Allestry, 1664) HB4/5.c.4.15

Cerebri anatome provides a detailed description of the nervous system based on observations gained from dissections for the first time in history. This publication is the first in a series on the nervous system that Willis had planned from the start. It brings together his concept of fermentation, interest in the nervous system, and his concept of voluntary and involuntary movement; added to these are Willis’s ideas about the corporeal and rational souls of humans. Over the following 200 years, Cerebri anatome and Willis’s later publications remained at the forefront of neurological research. Those outside the medical profession may know Cerebri anatome for its illustrations and the long-held belief that Willis coined the term ‘neurology’.

Many illustrations in Cerebri anatome were produced by Willis’s friend Christopher Wren (1632-1723). Today mostly remembered as the architect of London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, Wren was a polymath with many interests and talents. His depiction of the Circle of Willis, the circulation that supplies the brain with blood, is arguably the most famous illustration he created for Willis. It should be noted here, that Willis’s dissections of the brain did not benefit from the much later invention of paraformaldehyde fixation to stabilise the deceased brain. By extension, neither did Wren. He may have used an invention of his, a perspective machine (perspectographer), new techniques of using dye, and deductions Willis had gained from his dissections; the ensuing drawings and engravings are not the result of single viewing sessions (Kemp and Fils). Towards the end, the book contains illustrations that look markedly different from Wren’s engravings. Presenting overviews of the nerves, they were possibly provided by Willis’s student and assistant Richard Lower (1631-1691).

All illustrations in Cerebri anatome were produced separately from the text as single sheets. These were secured by leaving so-called ‘stubs’ at the opposite side of the gatherings (booklets) of text to which they were added before the book was bound. Because many illustrations are of larger dimensions than the leaves containing the text, they were folded into the right dimensions to protect them from damage.

It has been a long-held belief that the word ‘neurology’ was used for the first time in Cerebri anatome. Strictly speaking, it was not, of course, ‘neurology’, as Willis did not write in English. The English term may indeed have first appeared in Samuel Pordage’s translation of Willis’s collected works published in 1681. The books Willis published during his lifetime, however, were all in Latin. Willis used the Greek neologism νευρολογία in chapter 19. It is a compound word consisting of νεῦρον ‘sinew, tendon, nerve’ and λογία, used inter alia as a suffix to denote sciences and other academic subjects (ultimately deriving from the Greek verb root λογ– ‘to speak’ or the noun λόγος ‘word, discourse’). Alas, it has recently been shown that the French anatomist Jean Riolan the Younger (1580-1657) may have been the first to use the term neurologia (in its Latinized form), seemingly to ‘cross-reference sections on the nerves’, in editions of his Anatome corporis humani published from 1610 onwards (Janssen, p. e38). As the term had been taken up in other early 17th-century texts before Willis, it is unclear from where Willis borrowed it (Janssen, pp. e38-e39). This does not take anything away from Thomas Willis’s medical achievements, however. The eminent neurophysiologist Sir Charles Sherrington (1857–1952) regarded Willis’s concept of νευρολογία ‘as an early, if not the “first”, adequate description of reflex function of the nervous system’ (Mehta et al., p. e39).

St John’s copy of Cerebri anatome was donated to the College in 1674 by Robert Stafford together with three other Willis publications, Distribae duae medico-philosophicae (a later edition published in Amsterdam in 1669), Pathologiae cerebri (Oxford, 1667), and De anima brutorum (Oxford, 1672). Not much is known about Robert Stafford. He was born in 1655 as the son of William Stafford of Bradfield, Berkshire, and matriculated at St John’s College on 2 June 1671, aged 16. He donated altogether nine books to St John’s College on three different occasions: a volume of poems (donated 1673), the four books by Thomas Willis (donated 1674), and three theological books together with a biography of Archbishop William Laud (donated 1675).

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Diseases First Described

Thomas Willis, Pathologiae cerebri (Oxford: William Hall and James Allestry, 1667) HB4/5.c.4.14
Thomas Willis, Pathologiae cerebri (London: James Allestry, 1668) H.scam.1.upper shelf.20

Describing diseases of the brain and nervous system, Pathologiae cerebri is the second publication in Willis’s neurological series. Epilepsy and asthma, for instance, are described here for the first time. As before in Cerebri anatome and later in De anima brutorum, Willis used post-mortem anatomies and his patients’ case histories to support his arguments. A little insight into his work as a practical physician follows in the form of letters to a colleague in the final two cases of this exhibition.

St John’s College has two editions of Pathologiae cerebri. The first edition from 1667 was among Robert Stafford’s donation. The small duodecimo book printed in London a year later was donated by John Merrick (1670-1757). Merrick, too, was a St John’s alumnus, having matriculated at St John’s College on 5 July 1688, aged 17. He received his BA in 1692 and a Bachelor of Medicine in 1696, which was followed by his doctoral degree in 1708. He was married in the chapel of St John’s College in 1704. Merrick practiced medicine for almost 40 years in Reading ‘with much reputation and with the character of an excellent classical scholar; as well as that of an amiable and good man’ (Coates, p. 319). He must have done well for himself, as his donation to St John’s College consisted of over 500 scientific and medical printed books and several manuscripts. Among the printed books was also an Opera omnia of Willis’s work (printed in Amsterdam in 1682), which he donated in 1691.

Thomas Willis, the Chemist

Chemistry Notebook (Oxford, 1692/93) MS 238

John Merrick provides the occasion for a diversion to Thomas Willis’s work in chemistry. Among the manuscripts Merrick donated is a notebook of a chemistry course he appears to have attended at Oxford University in 1692/93 (MS 238). This fascinating little book contains instructions for ‘Dr Willis’s Syrrup [sic] of 🜍 ’, ‘Syrrup [sic] of ♂ by Dr Willis’, and ‘Dr Willis’s Prescription[?] of ♂ ’ (fols 31-32). These headings include the alchemical symbols for sulphur ( ) and iron ( ), respectively. At the time, chemistry only just evolved out of alchemy. This process began in 17th-century Oxford, fostered by men like Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, and, it seems, Thomas Willis, whose renown in the field of chemistry among the Oxford scholars is well documented (Caron, pp. 528-9; Martensen). Before Willis turned his focus on neurology, he contributed to the understanding of chemical processes in the body with his first publication, Diatribae duae medico-philosophicae published in 1658.

MS 238 is fully digitized and can be viewed at the Digital Bodleian.

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Comparative Neurology

Thomas Willis, De anima brutorum (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1672) HB4/5.d.1.4

De anima brutorum is regarded as the crown of Thomas Willis’s achievements. The work was a continuation of Cerebri anatome and Pathologiae cerebri, which focused on the human nervous system. In the first work, Cerebri anatome, Willis defined the cerebral cortex as the seat of the higher cognitive functions of humans (as opposed to animals). As the title De anima brutorum indicates, this book broadens the field to comparative human-animal neurology. The use of the word brutus ‘animal’ emphasises the view of animals as irrational in contrast to humans. While Thomas Willis contributed to the emergence of modern science, at the same time he not only included the soul (Latin anima) in his discussion but even put it centre stage by discussing effects of diseases on it and by considering the role of brain functions in it all. Despite this religiously influenced viewpoint, Willis’s ‘description of paracusis (the ability of patients with hearing loss to hear better in noisy environments) and myasthmenia gravis [i.e. a neuromuscular disease that leads to varying degrees of skeletal muscle weakness], and his ideas on sleep, headache and vertigo are still relevant today’ (Molnár, p. 332).

Looking at the illustrations of De anima brutorum you will be forgiven for being reminded, once again, of Robert Hooke’s Micrographia. As outlined earlier, Hooke’s book contains a series of descriptions gained from observations through a microscope, including descriptions and, arguably even more noteworthy, illustrations of small animals like insects. Willis and Hooke not only knew each other, but Willis employed Hooke as his assistant between 1656 and 1658. Comparing Willis’s lobster with Hooke’s flea reveals the resemblance between the two illustrations.

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Medical Versatility

Thomas Willis, Pharmaceutice rationalis, sive, Diatriba de medicamentorum operationibus in humano corpore, 2 vols (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1674-1675) HB4/5.d.3.11 & 12

The first volume of this publication describes anatomical, pathological, and clinical observations together with relevant medications, while the second explores treatments for respiratory, gastrointestinal, and dermatological diseases. Having started his medical research with a focus on chemical medicine, Willis has come full circle. The first volume of Pharmaceuticae rationalis includes ground-breaking work in medical disciplines outside neurology and anatomy. For example, Willis stands at the start of research into diabetics, which was long commonly referred to as ‘Willis disease’ (Földesi). He introduced the distinction between diabetes mellitus and diabetes insipidus. For the former he added the qualifier mellitus ‘of honey, honey-sweet’ in reference to the sweet taste of urine of someone with diabetes. We know from a ‘surviving casebook from 1650 that he [i.e. Thomas Willis] was not above doing urinosopies on […] market days’ in villages around Oxford, even though the practice had become ‘suspect’ by then (Martensen). Urinoscopy is the medical examination of urine, undertaken by sight, smell, and even taste in the days before the invention of modern laboratory equipment.

The two volumes have a special provenance, as they have been gifted by Thomas Willis’s grandson, Browne Willis (1682-1760), the eldest son of our Thomas Willis’s eldest son Thomas Willis (1658-1699). Despite a brief stint in the House of Commons between 1705 and 1708, Browne Willis was first and foremost an antiquary. With a lifelong interest in church building, he had built a church in his grandfather’s memory, St Martin’s Church in Fenny Stradford, Buckinghamshire (now part of Milton Keynes) between 1724 and 1730. Once completed, he arranged for an annual sermon to be preached in his grandfather’s memory on the day of his death, 11 November (St Martin’s Day), accompanied by a dinner for the local clergy and gentry, and the firing of the so-called ‘Fenny poppers’, six miniature canons. This custom has survived into our time and the miniature canons are still fired in memory of Thomas Willis.

The ex dono inscriptions in these two volumes are unfortunately undated. The Willis expert Professor Alastair Compston has mentioned that they were not the lost copies of Browne Willis’s dispersed library, but possibly duplicate copies in his possession, given away at his lifetime rather than bequeathed with the rest of his library to his own grandson.

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Thomas Willis, the Practical Physician

Richard Higges’ Medical Correspondence (England, 1660-1690) MS 296

St John’s College holds fifteen letters of Thomas Willis, all of them addressed to Dr Richard Higges, a physician based in Coventry. There is another fragment of a letter addressed to another physician, possibly George Bate, which is signed by both Willis and Higges. These letters are part of a larger collection of 54 letters written between 1660 and 1690 and mostly addressed to Dr Higges. Next to Willis, Higges counted Richard Lower, Sir John Floyer, and John Radcliffe among his correspondents. Despite being so well connected, hardly anything is known about Richard Higges himself. The following information was collected for a previous exhibition at St John’s College in which this album featured: ‘Originally from Gloucestershire, he appears to have matriculated at Queen’s College in Oxford in 1642 at around the age of 17, before embarking on medical training at Hart Hall [now Hertford College], to graduate DM in 1659. The only other details of his activities are that he held land in Coventry, where he practised as a ‘Doctor of physic’ supplying medicines to the pesthouses there. He apparently died in 1690 at the age of 65.’ It is not known when or why part of Higges’s correspondence was given to St John’s College.

The catalogue entry describing this album of correspondences lists all of Willis’s letters as autograph letters. Looking at them, it quickly becomes clear, however, that the handwritings fall into two categories: one elegant, perhaps more formal hand with flourishes and the other simpler, perhaps more rushed hand that is arguably more difficult to read. Are some or even all letters not autograph letters after all? Did Willis perhaps employ scribes or asked assistants to take care of (some of) his correspondence? All of Thomas Willis’s letters to Richard Higges concern his expertise as a practitioner. Willis gives advice for treatments and provides recipes for medications. Most letters are in English or English with Latin recipes, two are entirely in Latin. In these letters, he comes across as a compassionate physician, someone who is more interested in the welfare of his patients than in self-promotion, and someone who respects and even recommends the treatments of other physicians. The letters also testify to the illustrious circle of fellow physicians and clients in which Thomas Willis moved.

The Case of the Lady’s Skull and Feet

The first letter displayed dates from 24 March 1665. Willis advises making an incision in the skull of a female patient, Lady Brooks, and keeping it open for some time with the use of lint or gentian root. He also recommends a recipe for poultice to be applied to the Lady’s feet. Some words of the letter are illegible, but the general meaning is quite clear (the transcription follows the original spelling):

‘When I took leave of my Lady Brooks, I did then suspect her Ladyship would not be suddenly well, but that her condition would be worse before it would be better, wherefore I wrott next morning to my Lady by the London post, that my advise was (and now is much more) that [an] incision should be made on the place to the skull, as to make an Issue there, and with dry lint put in it at first, and a pea or gentian root afterward to keep it open for some time. There is certainly some hurt about the place either above or under the skull, if it be above the skull this will certainly give ease for it, and if under it may prevent any sudden illnesse till other means can be us’d. The Tormentation was appoynted in regard the part was swoll’d, w[hi]ch if it is gone may be left of or us’d but […]. For other remedies it needs only to keep the body and blood in good temper, for which a slender dyett of flesh one a day, of spoonmeat other times. Take her […] at night, her drink morning and afternoon. Make use of Glisters if there is occasion. Her Ladyship may have a Iulep[?] such as wed use to suppresse vapors from spleen or mother, to take of 2 or 3 spoonfulls at any time that her head is very bad (for though the cause [written above the crossed out word ‘disorder’] be in the head, yet the disorder of the bowelly[?] may overease[?] it).’

Even one of the best physicians and advanced medical researchers of the 17th century must of necessity provide treatment that make us shudder today and wonder whether the patient survived the ordeal.

From today’s perspective, the poultice recipe which follows as a postscript sounds just as adventurous: bryony (a plant which is poisonous when ingested), bay salt (the salt of evaporated sea water), black soap (a special kind of soap made from ash lye), and oil of scorpions. Nowadays, scorpion oil is promoted in a host of not very reputable-looking websites as a remedy for many afflictions. Perhaps, however, the early modern physicians were onto something after all, as chemists in Stanford have researched and synthetically replicated healing compounds in scorpion venom (Than).

The Curious Case of the Self-promotion

This letter from 3[?] March 1669 is the only one among the fifteen in which we can see Willis promoting himself and his research. This letter is written in the simpler, arguably more difficult to read hand, but can be summarized as follows: Willis will not propose any further remedies for his patient until the current ones have had a good trial. He agrees with Higges’s suggested treatment using a drink, but advises leaving out some ingredients. After having provided his medical advice, Willis asks Higges to present his services to Sir Thomas and announces that he, i.e. Willis, would order his publisher, Mr Allestry, to send to Higges as soon as possible a ‘little tract I have lately printed’. It is not clear to which ‘little tract’ Willis refers here. James Allestry printed several editions of Willis’s publications before his death in 1670. The English Short Title Catalogue lists four works in twelve editions/ imprints, but none was printed in 1669. Pathologiae cerebri was first printed in 1667. Allestry is connected with both the Oxford 1667 and the London 1668 editions. It is possible that Willis refers to the later London edition, but not likely. It sounds more like Willis refers to a new publication rather than a reprint of an earlier one. In addition, both editions of Pathologiae cerebri are over 300 pages long. It thus hardly qualifies as a ‘little tract’, unless, of course, the phrase was chosen as a humble understatement. Willis’s next known publication is Affectionum quae dicunetur hystericae et hypochandricae from 1670. With 112 pages in octavo format it is the shortest of Willis’s works printed by Allestry. The question is whether there was an edition or imprint produced before the one from 1670. That may be possible, as there are several imprints of Willis’s works that have survived only in one copy. It may indeed be more probable than assuming Willis refers to a work completely lost now.

MS 296 is fully digitized and can be viewed at the Digital Bodleian.
A detailed description of the manuscript, including Thomas Willis’s letters is available here (open the links to the individual letters in the right-hand Table of Contents).

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The Time and Legacy of Thomas Willis

Thomas Willis was born into the time of the Scientific Revolution, the emergence of modern science in Europe. The Scientific Revolution began in the late 16th century and is characterised by a departure from the Aristotelian worldview that had dominated academia for centuries. That worldview was based on knowledge transmitted over centuries and the belief that all there was to know had been known by the Greeks and Romans already. That ancient knowledge formed the basis of the medieval and early modern university curriculum in the form of the liberal arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music). According to David Wootton, the introduction of the idea of discovery in the late 15th/ early 16th century was a prerequisite for the gradual disengagement from the Aristotelian worldview. The realisation that experience generated knowledge completely unknown before was new in a world that focused on the past with its traditional knowledge: ‘[…] once experience was accepted as the ultimate authority, it was only a matter of time before there emerged a new philosophy which would bring the temple of established knowledge crashing down’ (Wootton, p. 73). Although he is relatively unknown today, Thomas Willis contributed to this process by participating in the creation of new knowledge based on observations and experiments.

Willis was a great collaborator and worked together with many practitioners of the ‘experimental philosophy’, as Robert Hooke called what we would now refer to as ‘science’ in his preface to Micrographia. Hooke himself was an assistant of Thomas Willis in the late 1650s when Willis still focused on chemical experiments. Richard Lower, today renowned for his work on blood transfusions and the circulation in the heart, was another assistant of Thomas Willis. In Oxford, Willis was ‘an integral member of a group of prominent experimentalists […] Willis’s contribution to the efforts of these men earned him a reputation as an ingenious and precise experimentalist’ (Caron, pp. 528-9). The great Christopher Wren collaborated with Willis on the illustrations for his works on neurology. After a lecture given by Wren in London on 28 November 1660, Thomas Willis was one of the twelve men who founded The Royal Society in 1660. The motto of the Royal Society is nullius in verba ‘take nobody’s word for it’.

As his letters to Richard Higges show, Thomas Willis was also a collaborator when it came to his work as a physician. The names Dr Prujean and Dr Bate are mentioned repeatedly. Sir Francis Prujean (1593-1666) was a London-based physician who was credited with curing Queen Catherine’s typhus in 1663. He served the College of Physicians, of which Willis was also a member, in various roles from 1639 to his death in 1666, including as president. George Bate (1608-1668) achieved the seemingly impossible feat of having been physician to Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II.

Thomas Willis’s name lives on in the Circle of Willis and indirectly in the nomenclature he contributed to the field of neuroanatomy. In contrast to other areas of anatomy, most of Willis’s original Latin and Greek neuroanatomical terms are still in use, ‘perhaps because of their accuracy and beauty, which can be appreciated when the initial difficulties of comprehension are overcome’ (Molnár, p. 329). Without the benefit of knowing about electric currents, Willis believed that ‘nerve impulses journeyed to and from the brain, and that “animal spirits” were “reflected” back towards the periphery from the striatum’ (Molnár, p. 334) He was also the first to propose that ‘the higher cognitive function of the human brain comes from the convolutions of the cerebral cortex’ (Molnár, p. 334). Willis is not only credited to be the founder of neurology, but he is also seen as the father of comparative neuroanatomy, as his work, in particular Cerebri anatome and De anima brutorum, compare the human brain with that of other species in ‘search for specific human abilities in cognitive functions’ (Molnár, p. 334). Thomas Willis died on St Martin’s Day in 1675, aged 54. He was buried together with his first wife and one of his daughters, who had died aged 4, in the north transept of Westminster Abbey. The gravestone, which focuses on his wife and also names his daughter before him, refers to Willis as M. D. celeberrimus ‘most famous doctor of medicine’ (Westminster Abbey).

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Credits & References

Curator: Dr Petra Hofmann (College Librarian)
Images: Ms Sophie Bacchus-Waterman (Special Collections Photographer)
We would like to thank the Oxford Conservation Consortium for their help with the installation of the exhibition.

This exhibition is largely based on an online exhibition in honour of the 400th anniversary of Willis’s birth in 2021, which was created as part of a wider celebration of Thomas Willis at Oxford University, initiated by Zoltán Molnár, Professor of Developmental Neurobiology at Oxford University and Tutorial Fellow at St John’s College, Oxford. The original online exhibition can be viewed at https://stjohnscollegelibraryoxford.org/2021/09/08/thomas-willis-1621-1675/.

References

• Bernal, J. D., Science in History (London: Watts & Co., 1954).
• Brockliss, L. W. B., The University of Oxford: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
• Caron, Louis, ‘Thomas Willis, the Restoration and the First Works of Neurology’, Medical History 59:4 (2015), 525-53.
• Charles, Sara, ‘Provenance Evidence from Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (1543 and 1555) and De humani corporis fabrica librorum epitome (1543) in the British Library and University College London’, Library and Information History 34:2 (2018), 104-128.
• Coates, Charles, The History and Antiquities of Reading (London, 1802).
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