Opera minora : a collection of essays, articles, lectures and addresses from 1866 to 1882 inclusive / by Edward C. Seguin.

  • Seguin, Edward, 1812-1880.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Opera minora : a collection of essays, articles, lectures and addresses from 1866 to 1882 inclusive / by Edward C. Seguin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    48/708 (page 34)
    myself upon being able mentally to arrange the various proposi- tions of a lecture, and to change the order of ideas at will. Trousseau, not willing to abandon the philosophic doctrine that words are indispensable instruments of thought, expresses the opinion that Lordat must have deceived himself. A professor of the faculty of Paris, confined in bed on account of an injury, was reading the Entretiens Litteraires, of Lamartine, when, without other warning, he noticed that be did not fully understand the sense of the text. He dropped the book a moment, then tried again to read, and o\ice more observed that he understood noth- ing of the light and entertaining pages. Trying to speak, he found that he could not utter a single word ; he attempted to write, and failed as completely. Thoroughly alarmed, he pro- ceeded to an examination of his body; moving his tongue and limbs, he came to the conclusion that there was no paralysis. Lastly, he entered into a mental speculation as to what portion of his brain might be damaged. Now, M. Trousseau attempts to show, that because he could not understand the Entretiens, the professor's intellect was unsettled. This can hardly be admitted, for it will be found on reflection that the complete amnesia of words would produce a like result. This valuable case is strong against the validity of the reading test in cases of aphasia. ^ c. The memory of words and signs is an element that is of external origin and artificial formation. Its development varies in different men speaking the same language ; that is to say, that some minds seem to have a capacity for a much larger vocabulary than others, the training and education having been similar. There is also a difi^erence between the educated and the ignorant in this respect. Some men (Cardinal Mezzofanti, for example), have acquired the vocabularies of more than sev- enty tongues. Contrarily, Kasper Hauser, the imprisoned boy of Nuremburg, at the age of sixteen, knew but the words mann and TOSS; the only formed stimuli his sensorium had ever received : and yet he was no idiot.* A patient complete y apha- s c may be made to copy a word, but if the model be withdrawn it becomes impossible for him to reproduce the combination of tters forming it, the written echo being put ^own instead^ Again, by dint of repetition, the same patient may be made to fepea a word or two, but the matter thus acquired has a very * Copland's Medical Dictionary contains an excellent account of him.