vi Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



best sort of opportunity for education by way of the surviving senses. At 

 the same time, we must imagine the hemispheres to have been traversed in 

 every direction by partly or completely closed pathways. The brain was 

 simpler than that of a normal person, and Laura was shut off from these 

 cross-references between her several senses, which usually so facilitate the 

 acquisition of information and the process of thought. Mental association 

 was for her limited to various phases of the dermal sensations and the 

 ■ minor and imperfect senses of taste and smell. Yet from their funda- 

 mental and protean character, the dermal senses are perhaps the only 

 ones on which alone the intellect could have lived. We are thus brought 

 back to Sanford's conclusion as derived from the study of her 

 writings. 'She was eccentric, not defective. She lacked certain data of 

 thought, but not, in a very marked way, the power to use what data she 

 had.' 



"One word more upon the cortex. The deficiency in the motor speech 

 centre is mainly macroscopic, as far as the third frontal gyrus is concerned. 

 The motor centre there had lost some, but not all its associative con- 

 nections. Histologically, it was sliglitly deficient. The lesion there was 

 so different from that of the sensory centres that a histological difference 

 ought not, perhaps, to be surprising. The cortex of the sensory centres 

 was not sunken below the surrounding level, though the gyri were slen- 

 der and flattened. Possibly in this sinking in a motor area and the absence 

 of the same in the sensory areas, we have a suggestive difference in the re- 

 actions of the several portions of the cortex. 



"Finally, the deficiency was not so very great even in those areas, 

 where it was most marked, and the question arises as to what sort of occu- 

 pation tlie cells in those areas had, which would thus justify their prolong- 

 ed existence. If they were thrown entirely out of function it is not easy 

 to see h'W they could last so well for nearly sixty years. In some way 

 tlien they may iiave taken a slight part in the cerebral activity, but it was 

 so slight that their specific reactions did not rise into consciousness, for 

 though Laura had some light perception up to her eighth year, she 

 apparently had no visual memories, wJiereas those who have retained full 

 vision up to four and a half or five years of age and then become blind, 

 do usually remeniberin terms of sight." 



