On aphasia, or loss of speech : and the localisation of the faculty of articulate language / by Frederic Bateman.

Date:
[1890]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On aphasia, or loss of speech : and the localisation of the faculty of articulate language / by Frederic Bateman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Anatomical Society for 1861, and the following is a brief summary of the two cases upon wliich he founded his somewhat startling theory. A man named Leborgne, 50 years of age, and epileptic, was admitted into the surgical ward of M. Broca, at Bicetre, for phlegmonous erysipelas, occupying the lower limb. When M. Broca questioned him about the origin of his disorder, he only answered by the monosyllable Tan, repeated twice, and accompanied by a gesture of the left hand. On making inquiries, it transpired that this man had been an inmate of the hospital in another wing for twenty- one years ; that he had been the subject of epilepsy since infancy ; that he had followed the occupation of a lastmaker up to the age of thirty, when he lost his speech, but no information could be elicited as to whether the loss of speech had come on suddenly, or had been ushered in by any other symptom. On his admission at Bicetre, he is stated to have been intelligent, understanding all that was said to him, and differing from a perfectly healthly man only in the loss of the faculty of articulate language, for whatever ques- tion was put to him, he invariably answered by the monosyllable Tan, which, with the exception of a coarse oath ( S— 71— de D—), composed his voca- bulary. At the end of ten years, a new symptom showed itself in weakness in the motor power of the right arm, which gradually resulted in complete paralysis of the right side, and he had already been bedridden seven years, when the occurrence of a surgical complication rendered it necessary to transfer him to the ward of M. Broca, who, in describing his tlien condition, states that