On failure of brain-power / by Julius Althaus.

  • Althaus, Julius, 1833-1900.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On failure of brain-power / by Julius Althaus. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/64 (page 15)
    and would sit a long time on the edge of his bed, staring vacantly before him, and forgetting to dress himself He passed his day in doing nothing, and could not fix his attention on the most ordinary occurrences in his business. The frontal lobes being likewise the seat of intelligent language, it is not surprising to find that patients suffering from asthenia in them should occasionally exhibit a difficulty in expressing them- selves intelligibly; but as that function is seated in a limited area of these lobes—the foot of the third left frontal convolution and its immediate neighbourhood—this symptom is absent in a number of cases. In others, however, it is very marked. The patient cannot finish a sentence, breaks off abruptly in the middle of it, and substitutes one word for another. This latter peculiarity is by many looked upon as a sure sign of incipient softening of the brain; but I have observed it in a sufficient number of cases of frontal asthenia to be able to say that it may be owing simply to temporary exhaustion of the centre of language, without struc- tural disease. Another peculiarity is that persons in this condition, who have been familiar with several foreign languages, have sometimes the greatest difficulty in expressing themselves in French or German, when English comes quite easy to them.