The Medieval Cell Doctrine

Abstract

The medieval cell doctrine was a series of speculative psychological models derived from ancient Greco-Roman ideas in which cognitive faculties were assigned to “cells,” typically but not exclusively corresponding to the cerebral ventricles. During Late Antiquity and continuing during the Early Middle Ages, Christian philosophers reinterpreted Aristotle’s De Anima, along with later modifications by Herophilos and Galen, in a manner consistent with Christian doctrine. The resulting medieval cell doctrine was formulated by the fathers of the early Christian Church in the 4th and 5th centuries. Illustrations of the medieval cell doctrine were included in manuscripts since at least the 11th century. Printed images of the doctrine appeared in medical, philosophical, and religious works beginning with “graphic incunabula” at the end of the 15th century. Some of these early psychological models assigned various cognitive faculties to different nonoverlapping “cells” within the brain, while others specifically promoted or implied a linear sequence of events. By the 16th century, printed images of the doctrine were usually linear three-cell versions, with few exceptions having four or five cells. These psychological models were based on philosophical speculations rather than clinicopathologic evidence or experimentation. Despite increasingly realistic representations of the cerebral ventricles from the end of the 15th century until the middle of the 16th century, and direct challenges by Massa and Vesalius in the early 16th century and Willis in the 17th century, the doctrine saw its most elaborate formulations in the late 16th and early 17th centuries with illustrations by the Paracelsian physicians Bacci and Fludd. In addition, Descartes reinvigorated the ventricular localization of cerebral faculties in the 17th century beginning with his La Dioptrique (1637) and later with the Latin and French editions of his posthumously published Treatise of Man (1662-1667). Overthrow of the doctrine had to await the development of alternative models of brain function in the 17th and 18th centuries.