St. Paul daily globe., 1896-03-30
UTTER ONLY A QUINTETTE
OF WORDS.
OTHER WORDS WERE GONE.
THE MAN ON WHOM BROCA MADE
THE STUDIES WHICH DE-
FINED APHASIA.
POWER OF ARTICULATE SPEECH.
The Discovery of It's Seat-A Mis-
fortune of Value to
Science.

Think Of a man confined to five
words for his entire vocabulary!
A real, living, breathing man. A
man with all the desires, all the needs,
all the passions of ordinary everyday
persons. A man with lungs as strong
as bellows, a man with a voice as
natural as child's, a man with a face
without a twitch Of paralysis, a man
that could laugh, cry, or even sing. A
man who knew his friends when he
saw them, recognized his food when
he ate it. listened with interest to
music when he heard it, felt the re-
sistance and qualities of objects when
he touched them. A man who could
understand perfectly we'll all you said
to him, and yet himself could say next
to nothing. In short, a man whose
thoughts. emotions and feelings were
entirely shut UP in the prison Of his
own inner experience, except so far
as he could communicate them by
means Of gestures and five small
words.
Such a man was the famous French
man, LIE Long. A five-worded man!
Ask LIE Long a question, and if he
wanted to say yes, like a polite French
man, he answered, 'Oui." If, however,
his answer was negative, with equal
politeness he answered, "Non" These
were two of his five words. The third
word pronounceable by this few-worded
man was his own name, and even that
he couldn't say just right. He called it
La To 40 icy 20
sound ing" when it occurred in his own
name, was too much even for this
Frenchman. Yet his nasal sound in
ron he pronounced with ease. But a
little idiosyncrasy in pronunciation
like this was nothing to a man Of five
words. LIE Long was glad enough to
pronounce his name in any fashion, was
glad enough to be able to say plainly in
MS own native tongue, yes and no, for
When 1t came to expressing all the rest
or his human wishes and human think
ing, which was just as normal as that
OF other people, he had only two words
left with which to do it-"tois'' "a cor
rupton of trois) and "toujours." BY
'tois,' LIE Long indicated numbers from
one to the greatest magnitude By
touJours" he tried to convey all ideas
that he couldn't express by his stock Of
four words and by gestures.
'Oui," "non," LIE Lo," "tois" and
"toujours" This was the remarkable
verbal outfit Of an almost wordless
Frenchman.
It Is not surprising that a fiye-word-
ed man should have set so eminent a
scientific investigator as the French
physician, Broca, to thinking A five
Worded man would set anybody think
ing. :
When, therefore, in 1861, Broca got
acquainted with LIE Long, and at LIE
Longs death got an opportunity to
examine his head, he did some good
that he SOON came forward with a.
scientific dogma that excited univer-
sal attention at the time and set the
medical world all agog. Broca knew
what good many physicians before
his day knew, that there were on Zee
ord a number of strange cases Of dis
turbance in speech, all apparently
due to injuries sustained in one way
or another to the brain. Theses cases
were of the most varied and curious
sort, from that Of people unable to ut
ter any words at all, or, at best, able
TO calculate but a few stock phrases
to those who seemed to have lost sim
ply certain letters or syllalbles out Of
words, or were unable to use in new
combinations certain letters Of syl-
tables which they already made free
use Of in certain words. "Bonjour,
Monsieur" one Of Broca's patients
would say to him. But when Broca
would ask the man to pronounce ''bon-
bon" to him the word stuck In the roof
of his mouth. He was speechless.
Knowing these facts, and knowing
what Gall, the founder Of modern phre-
nology, had said regarding the locating
Of various mental faculties in certain
portions Of the brain, Broca went to
work on the brain Of LIE Long and on
the brains Of some other persons who
had shown arrangement in speech dur
ing life. The result was his famous
theory. ST have located the faculty Of
speech" he said. 'It is in the left hem
isphere Of the brain, in the front part
Of the third convolution." 1t was this
part Of the brain that he found, in all
Of his patients, either eaten away by
disease or injured by LESSONS. On this
part Of the left brain, he argued, de-
pends, therefore, the development Of
the power of articuIate speech.
But Paris doctors are skepticaI lot,
They were not to be persuaded so easi-
ly that Broca by means of his five
worded man had located" the faculty
of speech.
So they all got together and In the
following two years held number Of
aUtopsies on persons who had suffered
from disturbances in speech. They
invited Broca to attend these atopsies.
And in fourteen out of fifteen cases it
was discovered that the part Of the
brain injured was just exactly where
Broca had said it was. If you look to-
day into any modern physiology, or
iological-psychology, you will find
there in the diagrams Of the brain
certain convolution marked "the re-
gion Of Broca.'
But IL there really bump Of language?
Modern psychologists and psychologists, while
accepting in the main the conclusions Of
Broca, say mo-
Prof. Ladd, Of Yale, is fond Of using
some strong landguage on this point. He
says: "The literal meaning Of the statements