History of neuroscience
During the second half of the first millennium BC, the Ancient Greeks developed differing views on the function of the brain. However, due to the fact that Hippocratic doctors did not practice dissection, because the human body was considered sacred, Greek views of brain function were generally uninformed by anatomical study. It is said that it was the Pythagorean Alcmaeon of Croton (6th and 5th centuries BC) who first considered the brain to be the place where the mind was located. According to ancient authorities, "he believed the seat of sensations is in the brain. This contains the governing faculty. All the senses are connected in some way with the brain; consequently they are incapable of action if the brain is disturbed...the power of the brain to synthesize sensations makes it also the seat of thought: The storing up of perceptions gives memory and belief and when these are stabilized you get knowledge." In the 4th century BC Hippocrates, believed the brain to be the seat of intelligence (based, among others before him, on Alcmaeon's work). During the 4th century BC Aristotle thought that, while the heart was the seat of intelligence, the brain was a cooling mechanism for the blood. He reasoned that humans are more rational than the beasts because, among other reasons, they have a larger brain to cool their hot-bloodedness.
Scientology and psychiatry
In 1923, Navy medical doctor and psychoanalyst, Joseph "Snake" Thompson reportedly accompanied then-12-year-old L. Ron Hubbard from Seattle to Washington, D.C. According to a recording of Hubbard sharing anecdotes from his life, he considered Thompson to be a "very great man" who sparked Hubbard's interest in "the human mind". Hubbard said that Thompson told him, "If it's not true for you, it's not true." Thompson was affiliated with Saint Elizabeth’s in D.C., the first federally operated psychiatric hospital. Thompson died in 1943, seven years before the publication of Dianetics. William Alanson White was an American neurologist and psychiatrist who served as superintendent of St. Elizabeths Hospital. A letter from the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International to the FBI, dated June 12, 1954, claims that Hubbard was trained by both Joseph Thompson and William Alanson White. In a lecture, Hubbard described consulting White about a theoretical calculation of human memory capacity, apparently during Hubbard's university days. White died in 1937, thirteen years before the publication of Dianetics.