Content area
Full text
The word hippocampus comes from late Latin: hippocampus, derived from the Greek words for a horse+sea monster. In mythology it was a sea horse, having two forefeet, with the body ending in a dolphin's or fish's tail, represented as drawing the vehicle of Neptune the sea God. The earliest use (Oxford English Dictionary) was in 1606, cited as "Drummond of Hawthornden" Let. Wks. (1711) 232. "Stately pageants. that of Cheapside was of Neptune on a hippocampus, with his Tritons and Nêreides".
Neurologists recognise it as each of two elongated eminences (hippocampus major and minor) on the floor of each lateral ventricle of the brain; so called from their supposed resemblance to the fish.
With its base in ancient classical history, neuroanatomy provides several metaphors that relate the gods and the brain. One is Ammon's horn....