Brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian.

Henry Charlton Bastian

Date:: 1880

Credit: Brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian. Source: Wellcome Collection.

690/762 page 672

$It has long been known that lesions in these situations, especially in the pons Varolii, may cause great diffi- culties and indistinctness of articulation, if not actual loss of Speech. A briefly-related case of this kind, in which a considerable lesion was actually found in this situation, as recorded by Dr. Wilks, may suffice for the final elucidation of this section. “ A lady fell in a so-called fit during dinner. She was taken up speechless and put to bed. She lay with her mouth open and with the saliva running from it, and she was unable to swalloio or to s'peah. There appeared to he no paralysis of her limbs, and from her gestures and expression there was every reason to believe that she was perfectly sensible. She was soon able to leave her bed, and recovered her usual health, but she never lost the paralysis of the tongue and palate. She wrote down all her wants on a slate- She swallowed with difficulty, and the saliva was continually flowing from her mouth ; but she was able to walk three or four miles a day, and was accustomed to join in a game of cards. About two years after the first attack she had another apoplectic fit, in which she died. On post-mortem examination there was found to be a great amount of disease of the cerebral vessels ; much blood, which had escaped from the pons, was effused at the base. Within the pons^/i-ere was an old brownish cyst. The central ganglia were health3\” If the foregoing interpretation of Aphemia should prove to be correct, it will afford a simple explanation of a class of cases which many have deemed to be as j)uzzling as they were in the estimation of Trousseau. What has been said on this subject will have sufficed to show their relationship with those cases in which there is unquestionably a mere difficulty in articulation either complicating an ordinary attack of Hemiplegia, or forming part of a degenerative disease of the Medulla, known as ‘ Glosso-laryngeal paralysis’. On the under- standing that it may be ‘ complete ’ or ‘ incomplete,’ Aphemia is a term broad enough to include all these varie- ties of mere loss of Speech or difficulty of Articulation.$

Brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian.

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