The Opening Paragraph of Ch 1 of my Cognitive Neuroscience Textbook
On December 14, 1650, Anne Green walked to the gallows in the courtyard of the city of Oxford, England. She was to be executed for murdering her newborn child (a crime she did not commit). As she faced certain death, it must have been the furthest thought from her mind that she was about to play a role in the founding of clinical neurology and neuroanatomy. She proclaimed her innocence to all who were watching, and after a psalm was read she was hanged. She hung there for a full half hour before she was taken down, pronounced dead, and placed in a coffin provided by Drs. Thomas Willis and William Petty. Willis and Petty were physicians in Oxford, and by order of Charles I, then king of England, they had permission to dissect, for medical research, the bodies of any criminals killed within 21 miles of Oxford.
I think I’m going to like this course.
