608 SPEAKING, READING, WRITING : AS MENTAL 



ments concerned in Speech may, under certain circum- 

 stances, be at once called into play, independently of pre- 

 vious trials and failures — just as the nervous mechanism 

 concerned with the act of sucking may be called into play 

 in the human infant at the time of birth, on the presen- 

 tation of its proper stimulus. No such untaught acts of 

 Speech would however be possible, unless development had 

 been taking place in the normal manner, and unless the 

 Auditory Sense and Intelligence were unaffected. The 

 manifestation of attempts at Speech are supposed in this 

 case to have been merely retarded by some slight and 

 quasi-accidental conditions, such as are occasionally opera- 

 tive in childhood — especially in those who sutler from 

 epileptic or other convulsions. 



Without an instance of this sort coming almost under 

 one's own cognizance, neither the writer nor any one else 

 might have been inclined to bestow much credence upon 

 two very similar cases, the records of which have come 

 down to us from writers of antiquity.* 



The son of Croesus who, according to Herodotus, f had 

 never been known to speak, and whose cure had been in 

 vain attempted, was, at the siege of Sardis, so overcome 

 with astonishment and terror at seeing the king — his 

 father — in danger of being killed by a Persian soldier, 

 that he exclaimed aloud — ArjOpcoTre fir) KTetve Kpotaov — • 

 ** Oh, man, do not kill Croesus ! " This was the tirst time 



"* The real import of these latter cases does not seem to liave 

 been apprehended, either by those originally recording them or by 

 a modern writer who has lately referred to them (Bateman, " On 

 Aphasia,'* p. 138). It need scarcely be pointed out that the sudden 

 beginning to speak for the first time without previous prolonged 

 trials and failures, is a matter vastly transcending in importance 

 the sudden resumption of Speech, when it has been for a while 

 suspended in consequence of Brain-disease. 



t " Herod.," Hist. I. 85. 



