In this combination of medical history and biography, science essayist Carl Zimmer discusses the discovery of the human brain in 17th-century England, and the subsequent experiments that revealed how it functioned. Zimmer focuses closely on the work of a group of Oxford scientists including Thomas Willis, a doctor who performed the first autopsy on a human body, and whose dissections of the brain taught him what have become the foundations of modern neuroscience. He also discusses the work of Robert Boyle, who established the experimental method, and Robert Hooke, who coined the word cell to describe the smallest unit of biology. The book includes an examination of the religious and ethical conflicts presented by these first experiments on the brain. Illustrations by Christopher Wren accompany the text. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.