Lectures of the diagnosis of diseases of the brain / by W. R. Gowers.

  • Gowers, W. R. (William Richard), 1845-1915.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures of the diagnosis of diseases of the brain / by W. R. Gowers. 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.

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    noims are lost before verbs and adjectives. This loss for nouns has been described as a special variety of aphasia, but it is only a special example of a general and almost universal law. Among nouns, caiteris paribus,-the more special are lost first, the more general being retained and more easily recalled. Thus, one patient, being shown a shilling, and asked what it was, replied money, then, after a pause, coin, and at last, after another pause, shilling. There is often error in utterance in this form of speech-defect. The patient uses a wrong word; asks for a spoon when he wants a fork. Sometimes, with a little care, we can trace the mechanism of these wrong words. Thus, one patient with some word-deafness, but no motor loss, on being shown a pen-knife and asked what it was, said Cornwall. Further investigation made it clear that the patient had only used a similar knife for the purpose of cutting his corns : hence the sight of the knife led to the energizing of the nerve-processes for the word corn. He had once lived in Cornwall, and so the processes for the word corn led to the energizing of wall in association with com, rather than of knife. In considerable degree, especially when there is loss of the auditory word-processes (word-deafness), there is con- siderable error in the forms of words, because the patient is thrown upon his motor memory, and . this is apt to mis- lead him when it has not the co-operation of the sensory memory. No doubt this mechanism was at work in the energizing of Cornwall, just mentioned. These patients have often an extensive power of expression by familiar phrases, if they bring them out quickly and ahnost auto- matically; if they hesitate they get wrong. If I want to say a thing I must say it in a hurry, or I cannot say it at aU, one patient said. Errors in writing are more marked in these cases than are the en-ors in speech, for the reason I have already mentioned, and we can often trace their origin. A patient who made no mistakes in speech wrote disacree- able for disagreeable, glag for glad. The former was evidently due to an error in the motor memory, substituting for one letter another for which the motor process is nearly