Notes of a case of hemiplegia / by T. Lauder Brunton.

  • Brunton, Thomas Lauder, Sir, 1844-1916.
Date:
[1891]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes of a case of hemiplegia / by T. Lauder Brunton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [Reprinted from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Reports, Vol. XXVII.] NOTES OF A CASE OF HEMIPLEGIA. BY T. LAUDER BRUNTON, M.D., F.R.S. It is only a few years since Terrier predicted that a knowledge of the localisation of the cerebral functions would render cerebral surgery possible. His prediction has been so anaply fulfilled that exact localisation has become of great practical importance, and even a very small contribution to the subject may not be out of place. The brain of man is so different from that of quadrupeds that experiments on them such as those of Fritsch and Hitzig only showed the existence of localised motor centres in the cere- brum, but were of no use in indicating the position of correspond- ing centres in man. The brains of the quadrumana resemble that of man so much more closely, that Terrier was able by ex- perimenting on them to indicate approximately the position of similar centres in the human cerebrum. But the brains of all the quadrumana are not alike, and in none of them is the brain so highly developed as in man. Recently Horsley and Beevor have made some experiments on the brain of the orang, which being one of the highest apes, might naturally be regarded as more likely to resemble man in the structure of its brain than would a lower monkey like the macacus. The following case is interesting inasmuch as it seems to show that this is not the case, and that the distribution of the cortical centres in man resembles that in the macacus or bonnet-monkey rather than that in the orang. In Terrier’s original experiments on the macacus the centre for the shoulder in Fig. I. is seen to be rather farther forward than those for the arm and hand (Fig. I. Nos, 4, 5, 11, a, h, c, d); while in Horsley’s farther ex- periments on the same kind of monkey the hip centre (Fig. II.) is seen to be also farther forward than those for the knees, ankles, and toes. From Fig. II. it will be seen that if we draw a line in continuation upwards of the praecentral sulcus (P.C.)