2 8o COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN 



within a certain time (about eighteen seconds) it was 

 impossible for him to do so at all. Now for finding 

 the word three when he was shown the figure 3 he 

 required almost eighteen seconds, and in fact he even 

 failed occasionally to find it. The first three numbers 

 are the ones that a child first learns, and are also 

 those used most frequently during life. We know 

 that the words we use least are the ones most liable 

 to vanish from our memory (for instance, the vocabu- 

 lary of a foreign language). It is possible that in the 

 brain of the patient the processes were partly mu- 

 tilated or rendered more difficult. The numbers 

 used most frequently could cross the threshold ; those 

 used less frequently could not. This conception is 

 further confirmed by the fact that by touching the 

 edges the patient was able to distinguish a ten- from 

 a fifty-pfennig piece, although the numbers ten and 

 fifty were otherwise gone, and as stamped on the 

 coins were only hieroglyphics to him. The money- 

 conception of the ten- and fifty-pfennig piece had 

 formed more associations and clung more tenaciously 

 to the memory of this man, who had to struggle for 

 his existence, than the abstract conceptions ten and 

 fifty, which had existed in his head only as a scholas- 

 tic luxury. Hence any adequate idea of the nature of 

 the disease of this man must be a dynamic one. In 

 the injured brain of this patient certain processes 

 were able to take place as before, except that they 

 were less intense or incomplete. Those innervations 

 forming constituents of relatively many or important 



