2 4 8 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



left hemiplegia (i.e. paralysis on the left side) in left-handed people. 

 Several cases of this kind have now been put on record. These 

 cases," continues Professor Ferrier, u more than counterbalance any 

 exception to the rule that the articulating centres are educated on 

 the same side as the manual motor centres. The rule need not be 

 regarded as absolute, and we may admit exceptions without invali- 

 dating a single conclusion respecting the pathology of aphasia as 

 above laid down. An interesting case has been reported by Wadham 

 ('St. George's Hospital Reports,' vol. iv.) of aphasia with left hemi- 

 plegia occurring in a young man belonging to a family of gauchers ; 

 yet this person had learnt to write with his right hand, so that as 

 regards speech he was right-brained, but as regards writing he was 

 left-brained." 



The person who suffers from aphasia, it may be added, still 

 remains capable of understanding what is said to him, because his 

 sight, hearing, and other senses, as well as his intelligence, are intact. 

 The meaning of the sounds he hears is understood, although there is 

 inability to call up words in response. It is usual to find the aphasic 

 person also unable to write words by way of expressing his thoughts. 

 He then suffers from agraphia as well as aphasia, and this result is 

 explicable simply on the ground of the close connection which exists 

 between vocal speech and written speech. "By education," says 

 Dr. Ferrier, " and by the familiarity engendered of long practice in 

 expressing ideas by written symbols, a direct association becomes 

 established between sounds and ideas and symbolic manual move- 

 ments without the intermediation of articulation ; and in proportion 

 as the translation through articulation is dispensed with, in that pro- 

 portion will an individual continue able to write who is aphasic from 

 disease of his speech-centre." 



In this fashion, then, we see how the facts of the new phrenology 

 supersede the childish deductions of the old. We note how the 

 exact experimentation of science serves to dispel the myth with which 

 the phrenologist once surrounded the question of mind-localisation. 

 In place of language itself an ill-defined term being situated in 

 the eye-region, as the phrenologist has placed it, we find the speech- 

 centre to be situated in Brocas' convolution on the third left frontal 

 lobe. We see in the frontal or forehead lobes of the brain the regions 

 which exercise the highest intellectuality, and which are the seat of 

 " mind," properly so called. The other parts of the cerebrum we 

 discover are devoted to the control of movements of various kinds, 

 which represent the results of the exercise of the mind and will. It 

 is in this fashion that science slays the old phrenological systems, and 

 replaces them by the definite knowledge which, founded upon experi- 

 ment and observation of man and animals, raises a superstructure of 

 fact upon a secure basis, capable of being further tried and tested by 

 the research of the future. 



