EDITORIAL. 



THE WORK OF CARL WERNICKE. 



In the death of Carl Wernicke last spring the world lost 

 one of its greatest students of the form and function of the hu- 

 man brain. Comparatively a young man, only fifty-seven, 

 Wernicke, as a result of an accident, met with while holiday- 

 ing in the forest of Thiiringen, was cut down at the height of 

 his professional activity. The revision of his text-book on 

 psychiatry, one of the most original and inspiring of modern 

 works on the subject, occupied him just previous to his demise. 



As a teacher, Wernicke attracted many students to work 

 under him personally ; he reached more through his published 

 articles and books. As a personality, he possessed originality, 

 independence and fearlessness, and accordingly came into con- 

 flict, sometimes bitter, with the opinions of other individuals of 

 his time. As an investigator he leaves behind him a record of 

 discoveries which will preserve his name permanently in the 

 histories of brain-anatomy, brain-pathology, clinical neurology 

 and psychiatry. 



His life from his graduation on was devoted consistently 

 to farthering progress in our knowledge of the brain. He be- 

 gan with brain-pathology, perfected himself in brain-anatomy, 

 and did his best work in clinical observation. 



Students of cerebral anatomy know Wernicke especially- 

 through (i) his study of the gyri and sulci of the cortex cerebri^, 

 (2) his presentation of the microscopic features of the fibre- 

 bundles of the brain as a whole, and (3) his atlas of brain-anat- 

 omy. He enriched our knowledge of cerebral topography by 

 observing in the maze of sulcus variation the constants now 

 designated as the sulcus occipitalis anterior, the sulcus occipita- 



