2. The Blood of the Gladiators

Dr Geoff Bunn's ten-part history is a journey through 5000 years of our understanding of the most complex thing in the known universe.

From Neolithic times to the present day, Geoff journeys through the many ideas of what the brain is for and how it fulfils its functions.

What soon becomes obvious is that our understanding of this most inscrutable organ has in all periods been coloured by the social and political expedients of the day no less than by the contemporary scope of scientific or biological exploration.

In this episode, the focus is Ancient Greek scholarship, with Hippocrates' astonishingly prescient belief in the brain as the chief organ of control and his debunking of the myth of the 'sacred disease' with his assertion that epilepsy was the result of natural causes.

Yet the belief that a cure lay in the magical properties of blood persisted for centuries.

Featuring the voices of:

* Paul Bhattacharjee
* Jonathan Forbes
* Hattie Morahan

Producer: Marya Burgess

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2011.