The Description of the Human Body The Description of the Human Body The Description of the Human Body () is an unfinished treatise written in 1647 by René Descartes (1596-1650). Descartes felt knowing oneself was particularly useful. This for him included medical knowledge. He hoped to cure and prevent disease, even to slow down aging. René Descartes believed the soul caused conscious thought. The body caused automatic functions like the beating of the heart and digestion he felt. The body was necessary for voluntary movement as well as the will. However, he believed the power to move the body was wrongly imagined to come from the
Cooperative Human Tissue Network Cooperative Human Tissue Network The Collaborative Human Tissue Network (the CHTN) was established in 1987 by the National Cancer Institute in response to an increase in the demand for high quality biospecimens for cancer research. The purpose of the CHTN is to stimulate, for the good of the public, cooperative efforts to collect and distribute human biospecimens and to thereby facilitate research utilizing those specimens. These activities are expected to encourage basic and developmental studies in many areas of cancer research, including molecular biology, immunology and genetics. The CHTN is not intended to be a human tissue bank, but instead