164 CEREBRAL LOCALIZATION 



APRAXIA. 



More definite evidence, however, is now available. 

 There are a number of carefully studied cases on 

 record in which, with no actual paralysis, there has 

 been a remarkable clumsiness in the performance of 

 movements requiring any skill, and in which the 

 patient has been quite unable to make some movement 

 voluntarily or in response to command, although he 

 may unconsciously do that very thing under the 

 influence of emotion or by accident. This condition 

 is called apraxia. It is most convincing when it is 

 unilateral. Thus, a musician may lose the power of 

 playing his instrument, or the clerk his power of 

 writing. In Liepmann's classic case, one of the first 

 to be described, there was apraxia of the right arm 

 and leg. " Asked to put his right forefinger on his 

 nose, he said, ' Yes,' and with his stretched forefinger 

 executed wide circling movements in the air. He 

 made the correct movement at once with his left 

 hand. Asked to close his right hand into a fist, 

 he performed various absurd movements of his arm 

 and body, but attained the required goal at once with 

 his left hand. When asked to give the examiner 

 a certain object with his right hand, he frequently 

 picked up the wrong thing, and still holding it in 

 his hand, used the left to take up the required object 

 and present it to the physician." A patient of de 

 Buck's, asked to lift her right arm, crossed it over 

 her body, put it in her left axilla, and after making 

 various other vigorous but futile efforts, said plain- 

 tively, " Je comprends bien ce que vous voulez, 



