Alcmaeon of Croton

Alcmaeon of Croton

Alcmaeon of Croton (6th century BCE) One of the most eminent natural philosophers and medical theorists of ancient Greece, his Concerning Nature is perhaps the oldest surviving Greek text on medicine. Alcmaeon was one of the foremost early anatomists who advocated dissection of human bodies, and he was the first to site the brain as the seat of the mind and that all senses in some way or the other owe their origin to it. Alcmaeon was also responsible for the theory that health and disease are the result of maintenance or disruption of equilibrium between various opposing humors in the body.