Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1877 — Cerebral Localization. [ARTICLE]

Cerebral Localization.

The question as to how far the brain exercises an influence on the motions of animals has been engaging scientific men for years. Dr. Broca was among the first who investigated the subject; he proved that when a man was deprived of the faculty of speech by a stroke of apoplexy, there invariably existed a lesion at the very same spot in' the brain, viz., in the anterior region, and on the posterior side of the third frontal circumvolution to the left. Hence the conclusion that thia was the seat of the faculty of speech in man, and thus one was led to conceive a special place for every intellectual action. Fritz, Hitzig, Ferrier, Carvilleand Duret, the most prominent among those who have treated the question, operate as follows: They take off part of the skull of a dog, then apply electric wires to dis ferent parts of the brain thus laid bare, and watch the motions produced. Certain points cause none, so that it is not the whole brain that acts on the muscular system, but only special points. Ferrier operated on monkeys in the presence of the London Royal Society. According as he touched various parts of the cerebrum, the ape would shake his fist at the public, raise or stretch a leg, or cut faces. It was shown that in the monkey the center of motion of the tongue answered exactly to that to which the faculty of speech pertains in man. From all this it follows that the surgeoiwnay now know precisely the point of the skull at which to apply the trepan. Thus, not long ago, a man was brought into the Hospital St. Antoine. He had received a blow on the left temple, and, on coming to himself again, could only speak with difficulty, and then he would call a fork an urnbrella, a lamps hat, and so on. Moreover, his right arm was half paralyzed. The surgeon at once knew what he had to do; he applied the trepan to the proper spot, and hit upon a piece of bone that compressed the brain. This splinter waa removed, and the patient at once recovered the use of his right arm. A few days later his tongue was freed from all impediment, and he left the hospital perfectly cured.— Galignani'e Messenger. A spendthrift, who had wasted nearly all his patrimony, seeing an acquaintance in a coat not of the newest cut, told him he thought it had been his greatgrandfather’s coat “So it was,” said the gentleman; “and I have also mr greatgrandfather ’a land, which is more than you can say.”