628 THE CEREBRAL RELATIONS OP 



power of Writing and of Spelling was very much impaired, 

 whilst that of Speech was affected only to a more trifling 

 extent. 



The man had " performed the duties of an important government 

 office, requiring good education and intelligence," and he had been 

 subject to a series of epileptiform attacks, at first principally 

 involving the left side of the body, but then, after an interval, 

 affecting the right side instead. The defects in the patient'a 

 power of intellectual expression about to be noted occurred only 

 after the second series of fits. Dr. Jackson says, " After these 

 attacks, the patient could talk, but he made mistakes in talking." 

 A few weeks afterwards, he met this patient in the street, and says, — 

 •* He was then, to superficial appearance, as well as ever. I oh- 

 eerved that he spohe quite well, and this throughout rather a lonrj 

 conversation. The patient said, however, that he was oflen at a 

 loss for a word ; and his father told me that his son frequently 

 made mistakes in names." His greatest trouble was in writing — 

 he had no difficulty about the mere penmanship, this was excellent. 

 *' His trouble was that he could not readily find the proper words, 

 and those he wrote he often spelled incorrectly." He v/^as able to 

 copy a paragraph from a printed book well, making only one or 

 two trivial errors; but in attempting to write from dictation, he 

 made very much worse mistakes in spelling than occur in a cor- 

 rected letter which Dr. Jackson has reproduced. When asked to 

 spell words, he also succeeded very badly ; and though he could 

 repeat iderfecthj even the most difficult sentences, luhen he attempted 

 to read aloud he could, not succeed at all, pronouncing almost evertj 

 word of tivo or more syllahles wrongly. 



Here, again, as in the case recorded by Dr. Hun (p. C23), 

 the ability to read aloud was commensurate rather with 

 the power of writing than with that of speaking. Both 

 reading aloud and writing necessarily require the integrity 

 of the Visual Centre, and that this was more impaired 

 than the Auditory Centre seems clearly indicated by the 

 fact recorded above, that the patient could repeat even 

 the most difficult sentences correctly — an operation in 

 which the Auditory Word-Centres are called into play, but 



