Cabanis, Pierre Jean George

From Philosopedia

Cabanis, Pierre Jean George (1757—1808) Cabanis has been called “the father of the materialistic physiology.” A friend of Mirabeau, whom he attended in his last illness, Cabanis also was an intimate of Turgot, Condorcet, Holbach, Diderot, and other distinguished freethinkers. His works are mostly medical, the chief being Des Rapports du Physique et du Morale de l’Homme. In that work Cabanis is accused of being a superficial dabbler who said that the brain secretes thought just as the liver secretes bile. As pointed out by McCabe, however, Cabannis said that “the brain is a special organ, specially designed to produce thought, just as the stomach and intestines are destined to effect digestion.” When later he says that “the brain digests impressions and organically secretes thought,” it is clearly a figurative way of stating the same scientific fact. Cabanis was a deist, not an atheist. He believed in the existence of an intelligent First Cause. {BDF; JM; RAT; RE}