‘Neurologie: the doctrine of the nerves’

Abstract

Chapter 16: ‘Neurologie: the doctrine of the nerves: the brain and nervous stock’ summarizes Willis’s treatises in Cerebri anatome, Nervorumque descriptio et usus (1664), De motu musculari (1670) and De anima brutorum (1672). Willis’s coinage of the term ‘neurologie’, intending this as the doctrine of the nerves based on the anatomy of the cranial nerves rather than the study of diseases affecting the brain and nervous stock, is described. The chapter explains why these treatises are additionally important for assigning function to the cerebrum and cerebellum rather than the ventricles; the concept of cerebral localization; the distinction between voluntary and involuntary, or reflex, movement; Willis’s account of the autonomic nervous system; and his ideas on muscular movement. Apart from these innovative contributions, Willis’s description of the arrangement of blood vessels supplying the brain and spinal cord, for which the book is celebrated, is described. The fifteen engraved plates are included. {148 words}