We all know that history is full of all sorts of weird and whacky ideas, beliefs and concepts. For example, did you know that medieval physicians believed that cutting a pigeon in half could cure you of the bubonic plague?

Today, we will be looking at a peculiar concept that originates primarily from the 16th Century: the homunculus.

Now, I’ll be perfectly honest: when I first came across the concept of the homunculus, I actually didn’t think much of it — I thought it was just an old thing that some people believed in once, and there wasn’t anything else to it, and that was that. However, after researching the concept (and its associated term) I realised that this is something which actually had a rich and (sadly) overlooked history. Thus, I present it to you (in as condensed as possible) form, today.

Concept

In a nutshell, the original concept of a homunculus was: it was believed to be a small person or living being, which alchemists believed that they could create via alchemy. It was believed to be a small person that differed from a baby in that it was not conceived within the womb, but created artificially with alchemic means and methods. The word ‘homunculus’ itself is derived from the Latin for ‘little person’ or ‘little man’. Interestingly, the concept of the ‘homunculus’ has drawn comparison to the myth of the Jewish Golem. Like the Golem (which is believed to be a clay or mud statue moulded by humans, and brought to life via mystic Hebrew methods) the homunculus was believed to be a small human-like body that could be grown and brought to life via alchemic methods.

History of the belief

Whilst the concept of humanity creating artificial life had existed (as a concept) for centuries [see Kitāb al-Nawāmīs from the 9th century, and the work of Arnold of Villanova from the 13th century] the first mention of the homunculus specifically in the context of a small being crafted via alchemy appears in the writings of the Swiss alchemist, chemist and theologian Paracelsus (who, fun fact, may have given the element Zinc its name) (Pictured above) in his book “De Natura Rerum” (Of the Nature of Things)” in 1537. The book itself (and the claims made, including those made of the homunculus) was highly debated even at the time of its publication. Strangely, in an earlier publication (“De Vita Longa” (1527)), Paracelsus originally described the Homunculus as a different concept entirely: he described the homunculus as “a small statue made of wax, intended to ward off evil spells”, seemingly reminiscent of a gargoyle or a Chinese Guardian Lion.

In the first chapter of “De Natura Rerum (of the Nature of Things, 1537)”, the following method of producing a homunculus is proposed:

Let the Sperm of a man by itself be putrefied in a gourd glasse, sealed up, with the highest degree of putrefaction in Horse dung, for the space of 40 days, or so long untill it begins to bee alive, move, and stir, which may easily be seen… This wee call Homunculus, or Artificiall [Man?].

Evolution of the term homunculus

Obviously, at this point, you can probably guess that the concept of the homunculus as described by the early alchemists is not real. However, that doesn’t mean that the term ‘homunculus’ is a redundant term — in fact, the term is still used to this day, in modern genetics, but even as early as the 17th century, the concept appears to have begun to have been used in a more scientific setting. One of the earliest examples of this is the study of sperm cells by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (pictured above) in the 17th century, whose research on sperm cells led him to believe that the cells were effectively a ‘tiny version’ of the human being that the cells would subsequently become.

Centuries later, the term homunculus was reintroduced to the world of medicine, albeit with a significantly different meaning.

Wilder Graves Penfield (1891-1976, pictured above) is credited with introducing the term to the field of neurology, in reference to the projection of motor and sensory functions onto brain models. (Note: Other scholars subsequently used the same term for a variety of concepts in medicine, however they are too numerous and too complex to aptly summarise here; you can read more about them in their works).

But by far, the most notable use of the term in the field of medicine is the Cortical homunculus.

This term (derived from the same meaning as the original, I.e. ‘little man’) is actually a distorted representation of the parts of the human brain which control specific body parts (the diagram, as the example shown above, appears to show a distorted ‘little man’, hence the name, I think).

That is the evolution of the concept of the homunculus, from a tiny, man-made man, to a brain-mapping diagram.

sources

1] https://worldneurologyonline.com/article/the-homunculus-from-paracelsus-to-penfield/

Thanks for reading!