The Sexual Naming of the Human Brain

It’s a common joke that the human genitalia have their own minds that act like second brains, but some Early Modern scientists evidently thought the opposite was also true. The seventeenth- and sixteenth century anatomists Thomas Willis, Matteo Realdo Columbo, Isbrand van Diemerbroeck, and Thomas Bartholin named different parts of the body’s seat of intelligence after sex organs, butts, and prostitutes. For instance, the part of the brain called “fornix,” which refers to some nerve fibers that connect the hippocampus with the brain’s limbic system, referenced the Latin term for “arch,” but more specifically a type of architectural structure where prostitutes had sex (our word “fornication” derives from this). Close to the fornix in the brain was a structure that Renaissance anatomists called the “vulva cerebri,” and if I give you the translation for cerebri (“of the brain”), you can figure out the rest. The pineal gland was once known as the “penis cerebri.” (Let’s face it, you were waiting for that.) And, in parts of the brain known as the colliculi, some scientists thought there were protrusions that looked like buttocks (“eminentiae natiformes”) and testicles (“eminentiae testiformes”). Except for the term “fornix,” each of these terms was renamed by later, more prudish scientists.