August 6, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



113 



THE AMERICAN NEUROLOGICAL ASSOCI- 

 ATION. 



The twelfth annual meeting of the neurologists 

 of Aoierica took place at the Howland house, Long 

 Branch, N. J., on July 21, 32, and 23. The mem- 

 bership of this body is limited in number, and is 

 intended to include eminent specialists on nervous 

 diseases and workers in allied branches of science. 

 From fifteen to twenty members attended the 

 sessions, which is about the usual annual attend- 

 ance. 



Dr. Burt G. Wilder, professor of comparative 

 anatomy at Cornell university, called the meeting 

 to order and delivered the address of the retiring 

 president. The address was devoted to the de- 

 scription of an embryonic fissure not hitherto 

 noticed. 



Dr. Wilder then introduced Dr. Charles K. Mills, 

 the president-elect, of the medical department of 

 the University of Pennsylvania. The address of 

 the president was a plea for the extension of the 

 activity of the association so as to enroll all the 

 active neurologists of the country, and the distinct 

 adoption of a broad psychological point of view, 

 so that papers on scientific topics closely related to 

 the interests of the practising neurologists might 

 be then presented. The president also favored the 

 proposition that the association should meet 

 biennially as a section of the proposed congress of 

 American physicians and surgeons. 



The scientific portion of the address consisted in 

 the presentation of a number of human brains 

 abnormal in some way or other. The brains of a 

 delusional monomaniac who perished at the fire at 

 the insane department of the Philadelphia alms- 

 house ; of Taylor who was executed for the killing 

 of his jailor, and who had committed other mur- 

 ders ; of an adult idiot, one of three brothers 

 similarly afi'ected ; of a negro ; and what is very 

 rare, of a Chinaman — were exhibited, and notes 

 upon the brains of three other murderers, one of 

 whom was afterwards afiiicted with paralytic in- 

 sanity, were read. In the paper to be published 

 by Dr. Mills, he willtreat in detail the peculiarities 

 of the individual brains ; in his address he confined 

 himself more to a general presentation of their 

 chai'acteristics. The brains were all of a low type 

 and showed similar affinities. The brain of the 

 Chinaman was characterized by a shortening and 

 obliquity of the orbital surface corresponding to 

 the peculiar set of the eyes in that race, and by the 

 extension of the first temporal convolution well up 

 into the parietal lobe. 



The presentation aroused great interest and 

 much discussion. There was a general agi'eement 

 that the brains had strong sutural, foetal, and low 

 race-type characteristics. 



Dr. L. C. Gray of Brooklyn gave an account of 

 a case of lesion of both temporal lobes without 

 word-deafness (sensory aphasia), but with a re- 

 markable loss of memory. The patient seemed to 

 have lost all retention of impressions whatever. 

 For example, he was once hammering on the door. 

 The doctor asked him to stop, as he was annoying 

 others ; he understood the request and comphed 

 with it after asking the reason for his stopping. 

 The doctor had hardly left the room when the 

 hammering began anew. He was again asked to 

 stop ; again asked the same question ; had no rec- 

 ollection of the previous request and again pro- 

 mised to stop, but again forgot. His letters show 

 the same state of mind ; while otherwise rational, 

 sudden breaks will occur in the writing, and then 

 will follow the words, "I don't know when I 

 wrote the above, whether yesterday, an hour, or a 

 minute ago," or words to that effect. In short, 

 his time-sense and retentiveness had almost com- 

 pletely vanished. The patient, whose age was 

 forty-three, had an attack of convulsions, re- 

 mained comatose for thirty -six hours, and then 

 died. At the autopsy the skull and dura were 

 found normal, and with sKght exceptions, the 

 only lesions were found in the temporal lobes in 

 the parts supplied by the sylvian artery (septo- 

 meningitis). Dr. Gray laid special stress on the 

 point that both lobes were affected, and thought 

 that our views regarding the seat of the language- 

 centre needed modification. 



Dr. Leonard Weber of New York discussed some 

 affections of the nervous system associated with 

 tuberculosis. Attention was especially directed to 

 the fact, illustrated by cases, that the nervous 

 symptoms often appeared long before the usual 

 symptoms of approaching tuberculosis could be 

 detected. These nervous symptoms were often 

 depressive in their nature, with a loss of interest in 

 one's occupation, with little or no tendency to peri- 

 odicity, and generally a well-developed suspicion 

 of the doings of one's fellow-men. The cases gen- 

 erally showed hereditary taint, and were confined 

 to women. An important part of the treatment 

 consisted in restoring a healtliier moral tone. 



Dr. Phillip Zeuner of Cincinnati presented in 

 person a case of auctioneer's cramp. The patient 

 was first made aware of his trouble by a difficulty 

 in crying his sales. He found himself unable to 

 keep up the continual repetition of the same 

 words, without causing a spasm on the left side of 

 the mouth which eventually made the action im- 

 possible. He soon found that he could reUeve the 

 difficulty by lifting with a pencil one corner 

 of his mouth. For a time the difficulty was con- 

 fined to his professional duties, but gradually it 

 extended, though less noticeably, to his ordinary 



