Beasts and Gods: Hippocampal quarrels before memory

The first description and naming of the hippocampus is usually credited to Arantius (c. 1530 - 1589), whose comparison of the swelling inside the temporal horn of the lateral ventricle to a seahorse (hippocampus) or silkworm (bombyx) was published in the 1587 edition of the Anatomicarum Observationum Liber. However, in the 17^th century, the term hippocampus was rarely used and its precise anatomy remained a mystery. The 18^th century saw the hippocampus referred to as a wide range of animals and divinities. These terminological issues provoked heated discussions in the French Académie Royale des Sciences, culminating in the seminal description of the hippocampus in the 1780s by Félix Vicq d'Azyr (1748-1794). However, it is striking that no hypothesis concerning the function of the hippocampus was proposed, and its link with memory was not established until the mid-20^th century.