Utility of the head and its parts

Galen says: When creating the head, it was not intended to create a brain, hearing, smell, taste or touch, for corresponding organs and powers also exist in animals that do not have a head. No, the goal was to provide a comfortable position for the eyes to carry out those actions for which they were created, so that the eyes were located above all other organs and towered above them on all sides. Indeed, the relation of the eyes to the body is close to the relation of the sentinels to the army, and the best and most suitable place for the sentinels is an elevated place.

Further, there is also no need to create a head for each eye it is necessary only for animals with soft eyes, for animals whose eyes need a safe shelter and in a well-protected place. Indeed, in many animals that do not have a head, two appendages are created that rise from the body and two eyes are located on them, so that each of them, for vision, occupies a high and dominant place. In addition, such animals require the presence of a head for the actions of their eyes, since their eyeball is hard. The head is needed only by those animals whose eyes need shelter and need nerves to go to them, imparting various movements to the eyeball and eyelids. A single organ, distant and thin, would not be suitable for such movements. We will talk about this exhaustively in the part devoted to the eye. The self-sufficient and subordinate parts of the head are hair, skin, meat, periosteum, cranium, dura mater, thin shirt-shaped membrane, brain, its substance and ventricles, and so on. what is in it, as well as the two membranes under the brain, the mesh and the bone that serves as the base for the brain.