284 COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN 



association which is in line with the necessity for 

 sense-impressions for the remembrance of words. 

 Before he was able to pronounce a word he had to 

 go through the motion of writing it. When asked 

 the colour of the leaves, he had to go to the window 

 and look at a tree, and then he had to go through 

 the motion of writing the word green with his finger 

 before he could give the correct answer. When not 

 allowed to use his fingers for this purpose, he used his 

 toes, and when this was forbidden, he made the writing 

 motions in his mouth with his tongue. When all 

 three motions were forbidden, he was not able to find 

 the word. 1 He did not write phonetically, but ortho- 

 graphically. It would be absurd to think for a mo- 

 ment that in this case one single centre, or one single 

 tract between two centres, was injured. The whole 

 apparatus was equally affected. I believe that the 

 associative mechanism of the patient differed only 

 in decree from the associative mechanism of a 



o 



normal being. Wolff pointed out that for each act 

 of remembering there is one association more power- 

 ful than the rest. But for a normal being the weaker 

 associations are sufficient for the reproduction, while 

 in our patient only the strongest one sufficed. One 

 may ask how it happens that we so seldom hear of 

 such simple, clear cases as those published by Rieger 

 and Wolff. I believe the majority of physicians who 

 deal with such patients have neither the scientific 



1 It was not necessary for him to see what he wrote or to actually write ; it 

 was sufficient to go through the motions of writing. 





