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Jean-Pierre Flourens

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The Greek-Roman physician Galen, in the second century, gave the name of labyrinth to the inner ear, in view of the difficulties he had in trying to understand its complicated anatomy. It reminded him of the Greek mythology story of the Cretan king Minos, who ordered the architect Dedalus to build a very complex structure where people got lost and could not find their way out. Even Dedalus, imprisoned in the labyrinth when he finished building it, could not escape. The great anatomists gradually deciphered the enigmas of the labyrinth. The first complete description, however, had to wait for the Swedish histologist Gustav Retzius (1842-1919), who did a fantastic job of describing and drawing the inner ear, being successful in dealing with the great difficulties of tissue fixation in that time. But even Retzius believed that the semicircular canals, the saccule and the utricle were parts of the auditory system. Jean-Pierre-Marie Flourens was one of the first neurophysiologists, t