Volume 2

Aphasia and kindred disorders of speech / by Henry Head.

  • Head, Henry, 1861-1940.
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Aphasia and kindred disorders of speech / by Henry Head. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Throughout the previous volume examples of disorders of speech have been cited, presenting various forms and due to diverse causes. This volume is devoted to a series of clinical reports of illustrative cases arranged in numerical order. Each number corresponds to that employed to designate the patient through¬ out all my papers on this subject1. But, in order not to multiply these reports unnecessarily, I have omitted the records of certain cases in the series, which either failed to illustrate any new point, or were in some way incomplete. Thus, although the numbers run from i to 26, no account is given of No. 3, No. 12 and No. 16. In most instances these reports represent drastically reduced versions of voluminous clinical records extending over considerable periods of time. Several of these patients have been under my care for some years and I have been compelled by exigencies of space to omit many observations of much interest, especially when they simply confirmed those made on some previous occasion. Each case illustrates some one or more aspects of the problems dealt with in the previous volume and, in order that the reader may have some guide to their contents, I have summarised them shortly under the following descriptive headings. §1. GRAVE DISORDERS OF SPEECH When the disturbance of symbolic formulation and expression is acute in onset or unusually profound, the loss of capacity to employ language may be extremely gross. Speech is reduced to “yes” and “no” together with a few emo¬ tional expressions. The patient fails to understand exactly what is said to him and cannot execute any but the simplest oral commands. lie is unable to read to himself with pleasure and fails to carry out orders given in print. Writing, whether spontaneous or to dictation, is affected, and printed matter cannot be copied in cursive script. The tests with the alphabet usually suffer severely and the patient finds it impossible even to arrange the block letters in due order. The free use of numbers may be gravely restricted and, in some instances, he cannot solve arith¬ metical problems, or indicate the relative value of two coins with uniform accuracy. Such cases conform more or less to the type usually spoken of as “Broca’s Aphasia.” But the loss of function varies profoundly in degree. Should it be still more gravely diminished, the patient may be reduced to a condition of organic dementia in which it is impossible to carry out any systematic examination; for he is then deprived of almost every means of reproducing his mental processes in propositional terms both for internal orexternal use. 1 [63], [64], [65].