Thomas Willis and the background to Cerebri Anatome

In 1664 Thomas Willis (1621–1675) published a text on the brain and nerves that was to be deeply influential for the next two centuries. Initially, Cerebri Anatome had little impact on English medical practice, though it enhanced Willis’s reputation to the extent that he was able to become a prosperous London physician1. Primitive descriptions of the arterial anastomosis at the base of the brain already existed in 1664. Willis improved on these accounts, and made the first attempt to attribute a function to the anatomy that he described. In the eighteenth century his description of the brain became accepted as definitive, appearing in the Bibliotheca Anatomica of 1774– 1777 for the first time as the famous ‘circle of Willis’. Modern historical scholarship has highlighted the contri-bution that Willis made to neuroanatomy, which had bee