Heinemann £17.99 pp379

Suppose you were to ask the person in the street which 17th-century discovery was more important — finding the form of the regular orbits of the planets around the sun, or discovering the structure of the human brain and nervous system. Which would the intelligent and scientifically curious man or woman choose? I suspect that it would be the brain. Crucial as the mathematical science of astronomy has been for progress, the greater understanding of the brain and its functions feels more urgently of importance, enabling us to come closer to understanding, literally, who we are and why we are that way. Biology has come out from under the shadow of the physical sciences in the 21st century. Indeed, since Francis Crick and James Watson’s breakthrough with the structure of DNA in the 1950s, and the completion of the human genetic sequence by the Human Genome Project in 2003, progress in biology and biotechnology has leapt to the forefront of the public’s scientific imagination.

By and large, however, historians of science continue to celebrate the heroes of the physical sciences above their equally talented contemporaries whose interests lay in the biological ones. While Galileo, Halley, Kepler, Leibnitz and Newton are household names, Grew, Lister, Lower, Ray, Ruysch, Sloane and Willis are not. This biography by Carl Zimmer of Thomas Willis (a pioneer in the dissection and observation of the brain, and the author of three important books on the structure of the brain and the nervous system, the medical theory of fevers and the physiological basis for feeling) is one of several recent attempts to redress that balance.

The modernity of Willis’s ground-breaking work with the brain, and his account of the role of the nerves in bodily functions, including the emotions, will astonish many general readers. Zimmer himself is engagingly frank about his surprise at the quality of the research and deductions that he uncovered in the course of his research. His thorough, informed reading of Willis’s published and unpublished work provides him with a wealth of compelling material. Wherever the author turns his attention to the detail of Willis’s achievements (particularly his virtuoso work on the dissecting table), his enthusiasm is infectious.

Zimmer also moves elegantly between Willis’s discoveries and equivalent work today, which he argues persuasively would be unthinkable without Willis’s innovative initiatives. So the reader not only gets a clear picture of the fundamental advances made by Willis, but also of the current state of play in brain research, particularly the studies being done on the connections, which fascinated Willis, between the “explosions” in the nervous system (Willis thought they were like gunpowder) and the sentiments and emotions that they trigger. Like Willis, Zimmer argues, neurological scientists are still in search of the material foundation of the human soul and what makes our thought processes distinctively human.

Sadly, it is when Zimmer tackles the historical backdrop to his scientific hero’s life and work that the pace flags. This is a problem common to a number of recent general history books (it may well be the result of editorial intervention urging the author to help general readers with “background”). Slabs of second-hand recapitulation of earlier theories of the soul and the brain stop Zimmer’s otherwise attractively smooth narrative dead in its tracks. So, too, do derivative summaries of the history of the English civil war, or William Harvey’s special relationship with the Stuarts. The voice of the author is drowned out by “factual material”; at times, we are in danger of losing sight of Willis altogether.

Nevertheless, this is a much-needed book on an extraordinary 17th-century figure, who did landmark work that deserves to be brought to everyone’s attention. “History has had a difficult time taking in the full scope” of the works of people such as Willis, Zimmer writes. “It’s as if there isn’t room in our historical memory.” Thanks to Zimmer, there will in future be a place within that memory for Thomas Willis.

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