‘A great and difficult thing, and full of hazard’

Abstract

Chapter 17, ‘A great and difficult thing, and full of hazard: the discourse of the soul’, provides an analysis of Pathologiæ cerebri (1667), Affectionum quæ dicuntur hystericæ et hypochondriacæ (1670) and De anima brutorum (1672). The chapter starts with Willis’s description of perverted activity of the particles in blood and the animal spirits which converts ordered movement into convulsion. The concept includes epilepsy and disorders of movement with preserved awareness, and extends to cough. An account is given of Willis’s concept of hysteria and hypochondriasis as organic brain disorders. His further work on comparative anatomy and animal behaviour as the basis for distinguishing the corporeal soul of brutes from the rational soul of man is described. The chapter provides an analysis of Willis’s writing on the human senses and passions followed by additional accounts of brain diseases and those affecting the mind, together representing a foundational work in psychiatry and behavioural neurology. {150 words}