The Bradshaw lecture on the brain structures concerned in vision and the visual field : delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons of England on December 11th, 1909 / by Francis Richardson Cross.

  • Cross, Francis Richardson.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Bradshaw lecture on the brain structures concerned in vision and the visual field : delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons of England on December 11th, 1909 / by Francis Richardson Cross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    perfect working eyes, and did not squint. She was taken to Moorfields, and found to be quite blind. The notes then made were, unfortunately, not available after her death. She was very peculiar and of uncertain temper. Her power of hearing, taste, and smell were very good. She could speak with a limited degree of intelligence. Her powers of locomotion and her common sensations were very imperfect. She never showed signs of seeing anything, never examined anything with her eyes, never watched objects moving about the room. After death the brain was removed and most carefully investigated. About the posterior third of each hemisphere was fotmd to form a cyst with thinned walls. The cavity included the pole posterior horn of the lateral ventricle and part of the middle horn. The cortex involved was that of the occipital lobes (excepting a small portion of the lingual lobule), the cuneus, and the angular gyrus. The proper structure of this wide area of the visual cortex and its surroundings was completely destroyed. The posterior part of the corpus callosum was much reduced in size, and the splenium was represented by a mere cord. (The splenium is the commissure for the occipital lobes, and sends into each a large mass of fibres Imown as the forceps major, while the tapetum spreads from it over the lateral ventricle. Dejerine had shown that fibres pass in the splenium from the posterior portion of the medial surface of the hemispheres, from the occipital pole, from the cuneus, and the hngual and fusiform convolutions ; and Ferrier also found that fibres pass from the lateral surfaces, the external occipital convolutions, and from the angular gyrus to the splenium.) There was no trace of the fibres of the optic radiation, and the retrolentiform portion of the internal capsule from which they pass was extremely atrophied or almost absent. The optic chiasma in front was small and flattened out by pressure from the distended dropsical third ventricle. The optic nerves and tracts were small. (The small middle root of the optic tract was present; it passes to the medial
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