Descartes believed the soul to be a definite entity, giving rise to thoughts, feelings, and acts of volition. He was one of the first to regard the brain as an organ integrating the functions of mind and body. English translation, London, 1650.

Descartes considered the human body a material machine, directed by a rational soul located in the pineal body. This book was the first attempt to cover the whole field of “animal physiology”. The work is really a physiological appendix to his Discourse on method, 1637. The first edition was translated from the French. The French text first appeared in 1664. It was translated, with commentary by T. S. Hall, and published in Cambridge, Mass., in 1972 as Treatise of man. See G.A. Lindeboom, Descartes and medicine, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1979.

An early separately published biography of a contributor to the history of the life sciences. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.