The Thymus — Not a Graveyard after All, Even in Adults?

The thymus, credited as being the “seat of the soul” by Galen of Pergamon almost 2000 years ago, was later considered to be a “graveyard” for dying cells and was deemed to be “an evolutionary accident of no very great significance” by Nobelist Sir Peter Medawar in 1961.1 However, in that same year, Jacques Miller discovered that the thymus “regulates lymphocyte production” and thus plays a “very important part in the development of immunological response.”2 Since that time, more than 50,000 thymus-focused articles have been published that show the critical role of the thymus in the differentiation and function of . . .