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Re: Ventricles in Nemesius and Augustine 

On Mon, 23 Feb 1998 13:27:56 -0500
Christopher Robinson wrote:

     In the fourth century work On the Nature of Man, by Nemesius, the
bishop of Emesa, discusses  the ventricular doctrine (Telfer, 1955). He
begins by enumerating the faculties of the soul as imagination, intellect
and memory. Then he proceeds, based essentially on lesion evidence, to
localize these faculties in the cerebral ventricles. In this treatise, he
says that "as organs, the faculty of imagination has, first the front
lobes of the brain and the psychic spirit contained in them" (ibid., p.
321). Later, he says that the faculty of the intellect is in the middle
part of the brain "and the vital spirit there contained" (ibid., p. 338).
Finally, the organ of memory was in the "hinder part of the brain and the
vital spirit there contained" (ibid., p. 341).
     During the same period, Augustine also presents a ventricular
doctrine. Citing the medical knowledge of the day (based on lesions or
diseases), he notes a correlation between the ventricles and function
(Augustine, 1982). He writes, "One of these, which is near the face, is
the one from which all sensation comes; the second, which is in the back
of the brain near the neck, is the one from which all motion comes; the
third, which is between the first two, is . . . the seat of memory
(Augustine, de Genesi ad littoram, 7.18).
     There are two notes that I would like to make. First is that the two
schemes differ, unless Augustine got the numbering right but the anatomy
wrong.

____________

Again, without having the texts in front of me, the only point I want to
make is that I don't think the two schemes differ as much as it might seem
at first sight. Nemesius has the faculty of imagination up front; Augustine
sees it as the site of sensation. In fact, the two are very closely intertwined.
Galen made little distinction between the "common sensory" and the imaginative
faculty, and all the 5 sense modalities are mirrored in modes of mental
imagery. In the middle, Nemesius puts "intellect". I would check the Greek
term here. I doubt that Nemesius, a Christian theologian, albeit one with a
remarkable degree of up-to-date medical/physiological knowledge, would have
made man's highest faculty of intellect corporeal. Probably he meant something
like judgement or cogitative or logistical power. If Augustine omits this, it's
probably for that very reason -- because he regarded man's intellect as
incorporeal. So he puts memory there. Whereas Nemesius, who includes what
I presume is a lower correlate of intellect, puts memory right behind it.
Finally, Augustine places the source of animate motion just behind memory,
whereas Nemesius has nothing. But I'm virtually certain that Nemesius would
have placed the source of animate motion there as well (as did Galen). If
Nemesius omits it here, it's probably because he was only enumerating what
he regarded as cognitive faculties, as opposed to motive.

Jeffrey Wollock
<HISTNEUR-L@library.ucla.edu>