Thomas Willis on the Brain*

Few events would have pleased Thomas Willis more than to see the publication of this beautiful edition ofhis CerebriAnatome in 1964, 300 years after its first production. This delightful memorial to Willis and his work is evidence of the sincere feeling of appreciation, widespread in doctors of the present generation in the New World, for the efforts of our medical forefathers. Here it has been concentrated into the personal dedication of its editor, Dr. Feindel, the distinguished Canadian neurosurgeon. Merely by picking up these remarkable volumes one obtains, quickly and vividly, the feel and flavour of the work of Willis and the times in which he lived. These emanate from the two vellum-covered volumes, from the texture of the specially hand-made Spanish paper, and from the watermark of the Willis crest in its pages. All provide a realistic back-drop for the facsimile production of Pordage's English translation of the work. The first volume is devoted to orientating the reader's appreciation of Willis and his works; the second consists of Pordage's translation of the work itself. A notable contribution in the first volume is the foreword by Wilder Penfield in which he sees in the work of Willis on the anatomy of the brain an anticipation of the development of English neurology and neurophysiology, personified in our own days by Sir Charles Symonds and Sir Charles Sherrington to whom this tercentenary edition is dedicated. Dr. Feindel, too, in his preface, emphasizes the nodal position of Willis in the history of neurology, and stresses how appreciation of this point has arisen from the appraisals of his work made by Sherrington and Symonds. In an introductory essay on 'The Origin and Significance of Cerebri Anatome', Dr. Feindel draws attention to the use Willis made of the experimental method in applying Harvey's discovery of the circulation to the special problem of cerebral blood supply. Short, informative sketches of the lives of Willis and his circle of friends, accompanied by fine portraits, place the achievements of each in perspective. In these Dr. Feindel takes the opportunity of assessing the debt Willis owed to each, particularly to Lower and Wren. Nor does he omit an account of Samuel Pordage who translated the work into English. This translation receives illuminating comment from Dr. Lloyd Stevenson who points out the difficulties experienced by translators from the Latin in finding suitable English equivalents for new scientific terms. This difficulty was sometimes beyond Pordage's capacity, as exemplified by his translation of the word 'sinus' by the English word 'bosom'. This, and other similar translations for the most part merely add a certain quaint amusement to the reading of the text, but on occasions they lead to serious difficulties of interpretation. Pordage himself seems to have been aware of his medical ignorance and linguistic difficulties, for he added at the end, 'A Table of all the hard words not vulgarly received, compiled for the benefit of the meer English readers.' This glossary however merely highlights his difficulties and limitations, for even 'the meer English' reader is not going to be greatly assisted