652 THE CEREBRAL RELATIONS OF 



suited about his leases, contracts, &c. ; and his son stated to rne 

 that his father indicates perfectly well by gestures which are 

 understood by those habitually around him, when certain portions 

 of the deeds do not please him, and that he is not satisfied till 

 alterations are made, which are, as a rule, useful and reasonable." 



Although his sight was good he could not read, or at least under- 

 stand the sense of what he read; he listened with pleasure, however, 

 when he was read to. He could not put together loose letters of 

 the alphabet, nor write with his left hand. 



" After dinner," Trousseau says, " I tried to make out Jow far he 

 could give proof of intelligence.* As he always answered ' Yes,' I 

 asked him whether he knew how that word was spelt, and on his 

 nodding assent I took up a large quarto volume, with the following 

 title on its back : ' History of the Two Americas,' and requested him 

 to point out the letters in those wo^ds which formed the word ' Yes.' 

 Although the letters were more uhan one-third of an inch in size, 

 he could not succeed in doing as I wished. By telling him to seek 

 for each letter in turn, and by calling out its name, he managed 

 after some hesitation to point out the first two, and was very long 

 in finding the third. I then asked him to point out the same 

 letters again, without my calling them out first, but after looking at 

 the book attentively for some time, he threw it away with a look of 

 annoyance, which showed that he felt his inability to do as I 

 wished him." 



It has often happened to him to say a word which he has not 

 uttered for a very long time, as if an old impression were revived 

 in his brain. Some time ago he dropped his handkerchief, and as 

 a lady near him picked it up and gave it to him, he said to her, 

 " Thanks / " in a loud and distinct voice. His friends were de- 

 lighted at this, and thought that he had recovered his speech. He 

 was asked, implored, to say the word again ; it was repeated to 

 him several times, but all was in vain, he never could succeed : and 

 this was the general rule, he could not even repeat the simplest 

 sound which had been uttered before him. He told his age correctly 

 in a most remarkable way, with his fingers. 



* What follows, however, is rather to be regarded as evidence 

 bearing upon the functional activity of his Yisual Word-Centre, 

 which was very defective. It constitutes no measure of the degree 

 of the patient's intelligence, since this (as shown by a previous 

 paragraph) was well preserved. 



