These cases may serve to give the reader an idea of the remarkable
delicacy and complexity of the function of speech. It becomes more
evident when, instead of cases of gross lesion, which destroy a whole
centre, or cut the connections between centres, we have disease of the
brain which merely destroys a few cells in the gray matter here or
there. We then find partial loss of speech, such as is seen in
patients who lack only certain classes of words; perhaps the verbs, or
the conjunctions, or proper names, etc.; or in the patients who
speak, but yet do not say what they mean; or, again, in persons who
have two verbal series going on at once, one of which they can not
control, and which they often attribute to an enemy inside them, in
control of the vocal organs, or to a persecutor outside whose abuse
they can not avoid hearing. In cases of violent sick headache we often
miscall objects without detecting it ourselves, and in delirium the
speech mechanism works from violent organic discharges altogether
without control. The senile old man talks nonsense--so-called
gibberish--thinking he is discoursing properly.
In the main cases of Aphasia of distinct sensory and motor types
psychological analysis is now so adequate and the anatomical
localization so far advanced that the physicians have sufficient basis
for their diagnosis, and make inferences looking toward treatment.
Many cases of tumour, of clot on the brain, of local pressure from the
skull, and of haemorrhage or stopping up of the blood vessels in a
limited area, have been cured through the indications given by the
particular forms and degrees of aphasia shown by the patients. The
skull is opened at the place indicated by the defect of speech, the
lesion found where the diagnosis suggested, and the cause removed.
This account of Localization will suggest to the reader the truth that
there is no science of Phrenology. No progress has been made in
localizing the intelligence; and the view is now very general that the
whole brain, with all its interchange of impulses from part to part,
is involved in thinking. As for locating particular emotions and
qualities of temperament, it is quite absurd. Furthermore, the
irregularities of the skull do not indicate local brain differences.
It is thought that the relative weight of the brain may be an
indication of intellectual endowment, especially when the brain weight
is compared with the weight of the rest of the body, and that culture
in particular lines increases the surface of the cortex by deepening
and multiplying the convolutions. But these statements can not be
applied off-hand to individuals, as the practise of phrenology would
require.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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