August 21, 1890] 



NATURE 



387 



The author's own cases are ten in number, and are of 

 much interest. Cases I. and I-V., however, seem to us 

 to have probably been general paralysis of the insane, 

 and therefore not true aphasia, no typical lesion 

 being found in the brain. There is no mention as to 

 whether the pia mater was adherent to the cortex, 

 which would have been probably the case in both in- 

 stances. Case V. is given as one of disease of the spinal 

 cord producing paraplegia with aphasia, but as no post- 

 mortem examination was held, it is impossible to say 

 that there was not a lesion on each side of the brain 

 which*, would explain the symptoms more simply. In 

 Case VIII., again, wo post-mortem examination was made, 

 and it appears to us to be a disease of the medulla or 

 pons and not of the brain proper. Cases VI. and X. are 

 evidently both hysterical aphasia, one occurring in a 

 woman at the climacteric period, the other in a man. 

 Ih the latter case, Dr. Bateman does not consider that it 

 was hysterical, but the whole history of the man appears 

 to us to prove conclusively that it was a typical case of 

 hystero-epilepsy, which is much commoner, even in 

 England, than is supposed. In Cases III. and VII. we 

 have motor aphasia, but without lesion of the anterior 

 lobes, but, inasmuch as the disease was found in the 

 internal capsule, the fibres from Broca's convolution 

 would, of course, be easily affected. Case VII. is 

 again one of motor aphasia, but is rare, as it is 

 accompanied by left hemiplegia instead of the usual 

 right hemiplegia. This, however, is a coincidence which 

 has occasionally been observed, and in which the speech 

 centres seem to be localized on the right side of the brain 

 instead of the left. There appears to have been no post- 

 mortem examination in this case. It is much to be re- 

 gretted that Dr. Bateman has not given better examples 

 from his own experience of the various classes of aphasia, 

 particularly of the sensory variety. 



In mentioning the various kinds of aphasia Dr. Bate- 

 man describes fifteen different classes. On analyzing 

 these, however, it can be seen that many of these are 

 mere degrees of a larger class, and it would have been 

 much better to have made fewer varieties. Perhaps the 

 most useful division is as follows : — Motor aphasia, in- 

 cluding agraphia and aphemia. Sensory aphasia, in- 

 cluding word blindness, or inability to understand 

 written language, and word deafness, or inability to 

 understand spoken language. Finally, rather as a result 

 of sensory aphasia, and, as it were, merely a symptom of 

 it, verbal amnesia, in which a patient either constantly 

 uses wrong words, as in paraphasia, or cannot remember 

 the names of things, as in the aphasia of recollection. 



Perhaps these cases of verbal aphasia are the most 

 difficult of all to fathom, and they have been the cause of 

 various neurologists assuming that in the brain there is a 

 a definite centre for the understanding and remembrance of 

 nouns, and another for the understanding of propositions. 

 Ross, however, has pointed out that such an assumption 

 is altogether unnecessary, and shows, by a careful analysis 

 of the evolution of language, that in a lesion of any of the 

 various auditory or visual centres such a dissolution of 

 language would occur as would exactly cause inability of 

 understanding propositions or nouns ; and, moreover, that 

 highly abstract nouns, such as virtue^ would disappear 

 first, and, if the injury were greater, then an inability to 

 NO. 1086, VOL. 42] 



understand even concrete nouns would occur. In fact, 

 the way in which Ross looks upon all forms of aphasia as 

 mere paralyses, either sensory or motor, is to us the 

 most satisfactory view yet mooted. These highly philo- 

 sophical explanations have been entirely unnoticed by 

 Dr. Bateman. 



A most useful part of this work is a chapter on the 

 medical jurisprudence of aphasia. This is a subject 

 which we believe has not been touched upon in any 

 previous English text-book, and it is of the greatest im- 

 portance. Undoubtedly in former times many pure 

 aphasics have been considered insane, and so incapaci- 

 tated for various legal functions. Now, however, the 

 distinction between insanity and aphasia is clear, and 

 although certain cases of aphasia could not be made to 

 understand legal documents, still other cases would have 

 slight difficulty in this respect, and each case would have 

 to be decided on its merits. 



The treatment of aphasia is intensely interesting, for, 

 although apparently it is a hopeless task to attempt to 

 form, as it were, new speech centres in the brain, yet it is 

 really wonderful how much may be done in this way by 

 systematic and painstaking efforts. 



To summarize briefly, we may say that Dr. Bateman's 

 work is one that should be read by everyone interested 

 in the faculty of language, or in diseases of the nervous 

 system; It contains an enormous amount of valuable 

 material, which has been put together by great labour, 

 and is written by one who has devoted many long years 

 to his subject. Ernest S. Reynolds. 



CHEMICAL CRYSTALLOGRAPHY. 

 Einleitung in die cheinische Krystallographie. Von Dr. 

 A. Fock. (Leipzig : Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 

 1888.) 



IN contradistinction to works on systematic and phy- 

 sical crystallography, this little volume is devoted to 

 crystallography in its far more fascinating relations to 

 chemical constitution. It has been a most noticeable 

 fact that while pure crystallography in its geometrical 

 and physical aspects has been brought to a state of great 

 perfection, our knowledge of the essentially intimate 

 connection between crystallographic form and chemical 

 constitution has until recently been almost at a stand- 

 still, and our information upon this branch of the subject 

 is confined to a few isolated facts, many of which even 

 are greatly in need of more complete investigation. As 

 to whether chemists will ever be able to predict with 

 tolerable certainty the crystalline form of a new sub- 

 stance of given composition, opinions among crystallo- 

 graphers are divided, and it may with reason be advanced 

 that, in view of the meagre collection of facts before us, 

 opinions cannot claim to have anj real value at all. 

 Since crystallography has commenced to be studied a 

 little more from the side of the chemist, almost every 

 number of the crystallographer's journal, the Zeitschrift 

 fiir Krystallographie, edited by Prof. Groth, contains con- 

 tributions to our knowledge of such relations. And whether 

 it be ever possible or not to attain the great generalization, 

 if chemists will only more generally tackle the study of 

 crystallography, the subject will at least be raised from its 

 present position of doubt and uncertainty. British chemists 



