Nowadays it seems almost intuitively evident that the brain is in the head and it controls our behavior. However, it was not always this clear. A popular notion was that the heart ultimately controlled thoughts and behavior – until a brutally direct “experimental” observation was made…
Galen, perhaps the most influential medical scholar of the past 2 millennia, observed that when priests cut out a bull’s heart in a special ritual the bull continued to move and run around for a few moments. But when the priests – in an even more special ritual – decapitated a bull it was immediately still and lifeless. He went on to reason that, therefore, the brain must be the body’s interface to the soul. From that point forward the medical community generally believed that the brain controlled the body; but through Descartes’ dualism and into modern day, the existence of a soul remains unknown.
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