Vivian Nutton, Jonathan Sawday & Marina Wallace on the brain: A history - Food for thought [audio 43min]

In the 5th century BC the Greek physician Hippocrates confidently asserted:"Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, grieves and tears." This might suggest that people have never doubted the importance of the brain, but for Aristotle the heart was the ruler of the body and the seat of the soul. Despite dissections of brains both human and animal throughout the following centuries, in 1669 the Danish anatomist Nicolaus Steno still lamented:"The brain, the masterpiece of creation, is almost unknown to us." Why was the brain seen as a mystery for so long and how have our perceptions of how it works and what it symbolises changed over the centuries? Presenter Melvyn Bragg investigates the history of ideas and debates their application in modern life with his guests Vivian Nutton, Professor of the History of Medicine at University College London; Jonathan Sawday, Professor of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde; and Marina Wallace, Professor at the University of the Arts, London, Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design. Baron Bragg--historian, journalist, novelist--is Domus Fellow, St Catherine's College, Oxford; Chancellor of Leeds University; President of Britain's National Campaign for the Arts; a Governor of the London School of Economics; and Chair of Britain's Arts Council Literature Panel.