A history of neuroscience at Oxford

Who was Robert Burton?

Born in Leicestershire in 1577, Robert Burton matriculated as a student at Brasenose in 1593 where his older brother William was already a student.  

In 1599 he moved to Christ Church, where he was awarded his BA in 1602. He remained at Christ Church for the rest of his life, becoming a Bachelor of Divinity in 1614 and College Librarian in 1624. 

While College Librarian, Burton drew on works from Christ Church’s ‘Old Library’, and the Bodleian Library when compiling his The Anatomy of Melancholy – a vast encyclopaedia on the subject of depression. 

When Burton died in 1640, his personal library – a collection of at least 1,700 titles – was split between Christ Church and the Bodleian.

What is the Anatomy of Melancholy?

First published in 1621, Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy has long been hailed as both an extraordinary piece of English prose, and as a major early work of cognitive science.  

An instant success, Anatomy represents an early modern understanding of the mental and physical phenomena that are currently being explored in research that connects the gut and mental health.

The emphasis that Burton placed on changing an individual’s environment, for example on diet, exercise and sleep, anticipates current interest in non-pharmaceutical remedies such as social prescribing and lifestyle changes.  

After publication, Anatomy went through five editions in Burton’s lifetime alone – more than doubling in size.  

Early years and the English Civil War

Thomas Willis was born in 1621 – the same year that Burton published The Anatomy of Melancholy. 

He grew up a few miles outside of Oxford, where his family farmed as tenants of St John’s College. In 1638 Willis matriculated into Oxford as a student at Christ Church, receiving his BA in 1639. Willis obtained his MA in 1642, the very same month that the English Civil War broke out.  

As part of the celebration of the quatercentenary of Thomas Willis’s birth, Professor Zoltán Molnár spoke to experts form a variety of disciplines about the influence of Willis’s work. St John’s College, which owned the land the Willis family farmed on during his younger years, also produced an online exhibition, highlighting his life and career.  

Professor of the Global History of Medicine Erica Charters spoke to Professor Molnár about how the Civil War interrupted Willis’s medical training, but saw him surround himself with an exceptional group of colleagues. 

Practicing medicine

As a reward for his loyalty to the royalists, Willis was awarded a Bachelor of Medicine degree by King Charles I in 1646. From this point onward, Willis was licensed to practice medicine.  

Records show that Willis practiced medicine in Oxford, and surrounding towns and villages, with growing success and renown – increasingly so after having been involved in the resuscitation of Ann Greene after her attempted execution by hanging in December 1650. 

After becoming arguably the wealthiest man in Oxford, in 1657 Willis purchased Beam Hall, opposite Merton College. He would reside here for the next decade.  

Willis’s notes and correspondences with colleagues reveal a caring and dedicated clinician – one whose account of his patients has clear similarities to the way clinicians think today. His modern view on disease is one of his greatest legacies.  

In conversation with Professor Kevin Talbot, Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Professor Molnár explores Willis’s approach as a doctor, and the extent to which his descriptions of the diseases he encountered hold up today. 

Discoveries, publications and legacy

Willis transformed clinical medicine, and in 1660 began brain dissections, with his first observations published in Cerebri Anatome (1664). 

During this period, Willis collaborated with, and was assisted by, a number of luminary figures. John Locke, one of his assistants in the 1650s, would later coin the term ‘cell’. Sir Christopher Wren, architect of St Paul’s Cathedral and the Sheldonian Theatre, provided Willis with illustrations for his work.  

Another of Willis’s protégés was the medical doctor Richard Lower, who would go on to publish on circulation in the heart and perform the first blood transfusion.  

Credited with the discovery of the arteriosus circle at the base of the brain – now named the ‘Circle of Willis’ – Willis made pioneering observations of various neural structures; his naming system, or nomenclature, is still in use today. 

He conceptually dissociated voluntary movements that originate in the cortex, from involuntary ones that occur in the cerebellum, and was the first person to propose that the higher cognitive function of the human brain comes from the convolutions of the cerebral cortex. 

Owing to his original observations and critical views, his way of observing and treating patients was different to that of most of his contemporaries, marking the transition between medieval and modern notions of brain function. 

Experimental Psychology

1898 marked the beginning of the official study of psychology at Oxford with the founding of the Wilde Readership in Mental Philosophy.  

Between 1915 and 1919, the second holder of the post, Professor William McDougall, left Oxford to serve as a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps, where he specialised in treating soldiers with ‘shell shock’. In 1935, a donation from Mrs Hugh Watts enabled the foundation of an institute on Banbury Road. 

Professor George Humphrey became the first holder of the Chair of Psychology as the Final Honour School of Psychology, Physiology and Philosophy was established in 1947. 

By 1957 the new Institute of Experimental Psychology had outgrown its Banbury Road home and moved to South Parks instead, finally becoming the Department of Experimental Psychology in 1970. 

Key figures in the history of Psychology, such as Donald Broadbent, Jerome Bruner, Anne Treisman, Larry Weiskrantz, Alan Cowey, Dorothy Bishop and Dick Passingham, have all taught at Oxford, and the department is currently being led by Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience Matthew Rushworth. 

Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics

The teaching of medicine at Oxford goes back at least eight centuries, and although the Anatomy School was built in 1619, the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics wasn’t established in its current guise until 2006. The Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, and the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience were opened as part of the department in 2011 and 2018 respectively. 

Oxford figures in these fields have been hugely influential, with a particular ‘golden period’ occurring in the second half of the 17th century due to a distinguished group of experimental scientists that went on to found the Royal Society in 1660.  

Thomas Willis was one of these scientists, and alongside his pupil Richard Lower, he demonstrated the physiological importance of blood circulation to the brain, as well as advanced research into the anatomy of the brain system. He has since been regarded as the father of clinical neuroscience.  

In 1913 Sir Charles Scott Sherrington was appointed Waynflete Professor of Physiology, and in 1932 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Sherrington is noted as having transformed modern neurophysiology, and was doctoral advisor to John Eccles, the neurophysiologist who was also awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1963 for this work on the synapse. 

In 1934, WE Le Gros Clark accepted an invitation to a Professorship in Anatomy – he was particularly interested in the anatomy of the brain, especially in relation to colour vision.  

Colin Blakemore was appointed Waynflete Professor of Physiology in 1979. At 35, Blakemore was the youngest person appointed to the position, and went on to contribute significantly to our understanding of vision, and how the brain develops and adapts.  

The Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics is currently led by Professor David Paterson, a post he has held since 2016. 

Pharmacology

The Department of Pharmacology began life in 1912, from a single room in the University Museum. 

Notable figures from the Department’s past century include Professor Sir William Paton, the creative mind behind the first effective treatment of blood pressure, and Sir John Vane, who was instrumental in the understanding of how aspirin produces pain relief and anti-inflammatory effects. 

The department was also home to Professor Edith Bülbring, one of the first women to be accepted as a Fellow of the Royal Society. Professor Hermann (Hugh) Blaschko moved to the department in 1944, contributing information essential in the development of some invaluable drugs. 

The department houses around 220 researchers, postgraduate students and support staff, and is currently led by Frances Platt, Professor of Biochemistry and Pharmacology.