CHAP. XXIX.] SPEECH AND THOUGHT. 619 



A. AMNESIA VERBALE.* 



In the acquirement of Speech there gradually arises, as 

 we have seen, an ' association ' between the impressions 

 produced by external objects, as well as between the 

 cerebral processes involved in ideas and other mental 

 states on the one side, and the actual or revived sounds 

 or sights of certain Words on the other. A similarly 

 close ' association ' also springs up between these latter 

 processes taking place in the Auditory and Visual Per- 

 ceptive Centres, and other processes in Motor Centres 

 causative of Articulatory Movements for the production of 

 Sounds corresponding to the Names of the objects or mental 

 states thought of. Thus in the process of Thinking, so 

 long as the brain acts in a healthy manner, Words become 

 nascent in consciousness primarily, and perhaps princi- 

 pally, as revived Auditory Impressions. These revived 

 impressions, either without or with voluntary efforts (that 

 is, by Ideo-Motor or by Voluntary Action) bring about, in 

 a manner the details of which are extremely obscure, 

 those multiple combinations of muscular action necessary 

 for the Articulation of the corresponding' Words. If this 

 primary memorial association between the impressions 

 produced by things and their names, or between the ideas 

 of things and other mental states and their corresponding 

 words, prove defective (so that the one does not follow the 



* The views expressed in this Chapter were contained in embryo 

 in a paper (published in 1869, in the " Brit, and For. Med. Chir. 

 Eeview ") entitled, " On the Various Forms of Loss of Speech in 

 Cerebral Disease." The present Chapter was written in the 

 autumn of 1878, and therefore contains no reference to recent 

 communications. The author has since read Kussmaul's elaborate 

 article (Ziemssen's " Cyclopaedia," vol. xiv.) where many of the 

 views expressed in his earlier papers are endorsed. 



