Why We have Round Heads

So my latest quest (no, not for the perfect habanero sauce with which to pulverize my tastebuds; that one's ongoing) is to trace the 19th century literature I'm reading to possible source material in much earlier periods. That was the the idea behind my decision to sign up for Early Modern (otherwise known as "Renaissance") Bodies this semester. I feel kind of like an academic tourist in the class, but the material is proving fascinating. I find I can follow it just fine so long as I remember to shelve my modern prejudices, such as my tendency to assume that medicine is a secular discipline. Not so in ye olde days. Respected Medieval anatomy handbooks attributed, say, man's upright stature to his need to be close to the Heavens. Ideas that we assume were meant as metaphors simply weren't.

Since you've no doubt been lately thinking to yourself, "Self, why don't I devote more of my time to reading 17th century anatomy guides?" why not rememdy the situation by checking out this snippet from Helkiah Crooke's 1615 handbook, Microcosmographia. Or a Description of the Body of Man. In this passage Helkiah investigates the many ways that mankind is different from the brutes. One key factor, oddly enough, is the shape of the noggin:

Of all living Creatures, only Man hath a head made into a round and circular forme, as it were turned on a wheele, both that it might be capable to receive a greater quantitie of Braines and less apt to be overtaken with danger either from without or within; as also, for the more ease in mooving and turning about; and lastly, because it was to be the Mansion-house of Reason, that is, the Soule. Now we know, that the Soule was Infused into us from Heaven, which even to our sense is round and circular: Seeing then her heavenly habitation is round before she is infused, it was likewise requisite that her Mansion here below should be orbicular also.


A guy with braines