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After completing my book, A History of Psychiatry, 11 I had occasion to examine more carefully Sir Charles Sherrington's study of Jean Fernel. 16 Certain concepts that attracted his attention appear to hold interest now in relation to the development of ideas in the history of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and psychosomatic medicine. I touch on this issue only in a tentative and introductory fashion.
Jean Fernel (1497-1558) was a sixteenth century physician and humanist. He studied mathematics, then medicine. At his death, his fame had spread throughout Europe. 9 His first purely medical work was On The Natural Part of Medicine. Later the title was changed to Physiology. “It set forth the theory of the healthy body and mind, as introductory to medicine.” 16 It was issued in 1542. Sherrington credits Fernel with introducing the term “physiology” into medicine, and “pathology” in its modern sense as well. Fernel considered Aristotle the founder of the study of physiology but today it is generally Erasistratos (ca. 290 B.C.) who is called the Father of Physiology. 9 Erasistratos showed some clinical awareness of the relation between emotions and illness. Elsewhere, I have touched on this theme in connection with the history of psychosomatic medicine and psychiatry. 15
Fernel was born at Mondidier, attended the University of Paris, and served later on its faculty. He knew anatomy well and may have been the first to describe the central canal of the spinal cord. His awareness of the peristaltic motion in the esophagus and intestines was rediscovered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 9 He noted the increase in the size of arteries in relation to cardiac systole.
Fernel had been quite interested in astronomy, and in his writings he attacked astrology and magic to which many were attracted in