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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    remark that all knowledge is power ; besides, surely no subject is more worthy of the careful investigation of all labourers in the field of science than the Origin of Speech ; it is one of the questions in which the physiologist and the student of language meet, and now that the sluice- gates of public opinion are opened upon it, error will be swept away, and a fresh impulse be given to the study of the mind ; and the practical discoveries and brilliant achievements of recent workers in this branch of science, constitute the grandest triumphs that adorn the history of modern medicine. Moreover, the scientific result of the recent researches about the seat of speech, need not necessarily be limited to the acquisition of a better know- ledge of the conditions under which that faculty is developed or lost; for since the attention of the profession has been directed to the investigation of the causes which interfere with the exercise of speech, a new flood of light has been thrown upon the minute anatomy and physiology of the nervous centres, which may eventually lead to the localisation of our other faculties, and it is not too much to say that through the study of the phenomena of speech, we may hope to get a clue to the solution of many other problems connected with the nervous system which are now shrouded in obscurity. The definite solution of the question I have been dis- cussing has been retarded by the fact that authors, iii many instances, have written with pre-conceived notions, which really are only sketches on the canvas of their fancy; upon the ground-work of problematic conceptions, and arbitrary assumptions, they attempt to rear a pre- mature generalisation of crude hypotheses; and their works bear the impress of a desire to prove one theory as against another, rather than to place on record facts