ABSTRACT OF THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
5 
We have here seven or more different sets of reflex actions over 
words. 
1. In three ways by hearing. We can have a word — say the 
word run — excited in the sensorium. This can be reflected 
through the mouth by our repeating the word, or through the 
hand by oar writing it, or through our legs by running. 
2. In three ways by seeing. We read the word run, which, 
exciting the central motor centre, can issue forth by vocal 
utterance, by the hand in copying the word, by the legs in 
running. 
3. By feeling. As in a blind man reading, which usually only 
issues out in action as reading. 
There is the still wider and probably older set of reflex actions 
connected with words, where all the various conditions under 
which we are placed produce thoughts or states of mind which we 
wish to communicate to others. In this there has to be a deal 
more intelligent effort used to find the right words; but the 
history of persons possessed of great gifts in this respect points to 
the fact that there has arisen in the human sensorium certain 
connections between particular states of thought or feeling and 
words, so that the appropriate expression naturally occurs. 
Persons under great excitement or peculiar conditions utter 
often peculiar and unconventional phrases, which, however, at 
once strike the hearer as appropriate or natural, showing some 
previous connection between the thoughts and the words. 
It is the word which excites the appropriate action in its 
complexity, the consciousness or will only giving it permission 
to go forth. This will perhaps be made plainer if I give in 
illustration the cases of Aphasia, or loss of speech ; and Agraphia, 
or loss of power of writing, from disease of the speech centre in 
the brain. To quote Ferrier : " Examples of all these different 
conditions are to be met with in those afflicted with Aphasia. 
Some can neither speak nor write ; some can write, but cannot 
speak ; some can write their names, but nothing else. All 
can comprehend spoken language ; many can comprehend written 
language ; others not at all, or only imperfectly. " 
To quote Ladd : " Aphasia is far more frequently due to 
changes in the left than in the right side of the skull. Out 
of 260 cases, Dr. Seguin found the lesion in 243 on the left 
side, and only 17 on the right." This is no doubt due to the 
