Excerpt from The American Anatomical Memoirs, Vol. 1: The Morphology and Evolutional Significance of the Pineal Body
"Son siege au milieu de parties tres-importantes de l'encephale, sa constance chez l'homme et le vertebres, font pourtant presumer que ses usages, s'ils ne sont pas d'un ordre aussi important qu'on le supposait a l'epoque des Esprits Vitaux, n'en sont pas moins reels et tres-interessant a connaitre." Legros. These de Paris, 1873, page 24.
"Vix ulla unquam corporis nostri particula tantam famam inter eruditos non modo, sed etiam inter illiterates nacta est, ac cerebri sic dicta glandula pinealis." These words written by Soemmering in 1785 still hold true. Not only did this organ attract much early medical attention, but its reputation was extended by the metaphysicians and even further increased by the satirical literature of an uncommonly virile period. Descartes (1649) in his discourse on the sources of the human passions, expressed the belief that the pineal body was the seat of the soul. This interpretation passed current during the epoch of Vital Spirits. It did not, however, go altogether unassailed. Voltaire so successfully made it the subject of parody that his whimsical conception of the pineal body became more influential than the origina hypothesis of Descartes. According to Voltaire, the epiphysis should be regarded as the driver which, by means of two nerve bands, guides the action of the cerebral hemispheres. These nerve bands were long referred to by the anatomists as "the reins of the soul."
During the past hundred years an increasing volume of research has revealed the difficulties in the epiphyseal problem and shown how far we are from a solution of it.
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