PROGRESS IN EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 



Jackson, in England, from his studies of epilepsy. But 

 no positive evidence was forth-coming until 1861, when 

 Dr. Paul Broca brought before the Academy of Medi- 

 cine in Paris a case of brain lesion which he regarded as 

 having most important bearings on the question of cere- 

 bral localization. 



The case was that of a patient at the Bicetre, who for 

 twenty years had been deprived of the power of speech, 

 seemingly through loss of memory of words. In 1861 

 this patient died, and an autopsy revealed that a certain 

 convolution of the left frontal lobe of his cerebrum had 

 been totally destroyed by disease, the remainder of his 

 brain being intact. Broca felt that this observation 

 pointed strongly to a localization of the memory of 

 words in a definite area of the brain. Moreover, it 

 transpired that the case was not without precedent. As 

 long ago as 1825 Dr. Boillard had been led, through 

 pathological studies, to locate definitely a centre for the 

 articulation of words in the frontal lobe, and here and 

 there other observers had made tentatives in the same 

 direction. Boillard had even followed the matter up 

 with pertinacity, but the world was not ready to listen 

 to him. Now, however, in the half -decade that fol- 

 lowed Broca's announcements, interest rose to fever- 

 heat, and through the efforts of Broca, Boillard, and 

 numerous others it was proved that a veritable centre 

 having a strange domination over the memory of articu- 

 late words has its seat in the third convolution of the 

 frontal lobe of the cerebrum, usually in the left hemi- 

 sphere. That part of the brain has since been known to 

 the English-speaking world as the convolution of Broca, 

 a name which, strangely enough, the discoverer's com- 

 patriots have been slow to accept. 



419 ,f 



