The Seba library treats Gall in 6 passages, across 5 authors (including Padel, Ruth, Kandel, Eric R., Beekes, Robert).
Apollo represented the gall, Dionysus the spleen, Demeter the liver, and so on. Splanchna receive the image-impress of gods. They reflect what gods want to be.
Padel documents the archaic Greek allegorical-extispicic tradition in which gall is identified with Apollo, situating the substance within a system whereby innards are the site of divine presence and communication.
, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994thesis
Gall assigned these faculties to twenty-seven different regions of the cortex, each of which he called a ‘mental organ.’ … This theory of localized function opened a debate that persisted through the next century.
Kandel situates Franz Joseph Gall as the originator of cerebral localization theory, assessing both the genuine insight and methodological errors of his phrenological faculty psychology.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006thesis
ON gall [n.] ‘gall, poison’, OHG galla [f.] < PGm. *galla-, *gallo(n)- < IE … originally referred to the green-yellow color of germinating and sprouting vegetation, cf. OHG gruoni ‘green’
Beekes reconstructs the Indo-European etymological root of ‘gall,’ tracing its semantic core through color-terms for green-yellow vegetation to its cognates meaning bile and poison across Germanic and Avestan languages.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
This hot and bilious man is iron… it is called a man because it has soul, body, and spirit…. That metal, although it is begotten by the virtue of all the stars and planets, is nevertheless especially begotten in the earth by virtue of the most high and mighty Pole Star
Jung’s alchemical sources link the choleric-bilious principle to Mars and iron, establishing the connection between gall as bile and the hot, martial temperament within alchemical psychology.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967supporting
The debate never turned to the connection between impaired social conduct and frontal lobe damage.
Damasio notes that post-Gall neurological debate fixated on language and motor localization, missing the more psychologically significant question of social-emotional function and frontal damage.
, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994aside
dubba, 1522 gall, 1642 hriflingr, 643 ljosta, 852 roora, 466 stinga, 1392
An index entry in Beekes confirms the presence of Old Norse ‘gall’ as a lexical item cross-referenced within the etymological dictionary’s Germanic indices.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside