Alcmaeon was born in Croton. He was a Greek medical writer and philosopher-scientist. He probably wrote his book sometime between 500 and 450 BC. The surviving fragments focused primarily on issues of psychology and epistemology. They reveal Alcmaeon to be a thinker of innovation. He was the first to identify the brain as the seat of understanding and to recognize understanding from perception. Alcmaeon thought that the sensory organs were connected to the brain by channels. He also discovered the optic nerve by excising the eyeball of an animal. He was the first to develop an argument for the immortality of the soul. He used a political metaphor to define health and disease. The politic
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