The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-01-20
ONLY FIVE WORDS To TALK WITH.
such Was the Plight of lie Long, n
Famous Frcnchman.

Famous Ercnchm1n.
Think OF a man confined 10 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.
man with lungs as strong as bellows. a
man with voice as natural as a child's,
a man with a face without a twitch Of
paralysis, 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 il, felt the resistance
and qualities OF objects when ne touched
them. A man who could understand per-
fcctly all YOU said to him, and yet HIM
self could say next TO nothing. In short,
a man whose thoughts, emotions and feel
ings we're entirely shut up I'm the prison
of his own inner experience, except so
far as he could communicate them 10y
means of gestures and nve small words
Such man was the famous Frenchman.
lie Long. A hve-worded mani
Ask lie Long question. and if he
man he answered, Out" II, however,
his answer was negative, with equal po-
likeness he answered, Non. These were
two of his five words. The third word
was his own name. and even that he
couldn't say just right. He called Ii lie
Lo." That IS TO say, the nasal sound
was too much ever for this Frenchman.
Yet the nasal sound In mon he pronounc-
ed with ease. But a little idiOsyncrasy
in pronunciation like this was nothing to
a man of ave words. lie Long was glad
enough to pronounce his name in any
fashion, was glad enough TO be able to
say plainly in his own native tongue,
yes and no, for when il came to express
ing all the rest of his human wishes and
human thinking, which was just as nor
two words left with which TO do it-"tois''
Ga corruption of "trois'O and 'toujours."
BY tots" 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, mon" lie Lo," "tois" and "tou-
Jours! This was the remarkable verbal
outfit of an almost wordless Frenchman.
1t is not surprising that tive-worded
man should have set so eminent a scien-
tihc investigator as the French physician,
Broca, TO thinking. A fve-worded man
would set anybody thinking
When. therefore, in 1851 BrOca got ac-
quainted with lie Long, and at lie Long
death got an opportunity to examine his
brain, he did such good thinking that he
soon came forward with a scientific dog
ma that excited universal attention at the
time and set the medical world all agog
Broca knew what a good many physi-
clans before his day knew, that there were
on record a number of strange cases OF
disturbance in speech, all apparently due
to injuries sustained in one way or other
to the brain. These cases were of the most
varied and curious sort, from that of peo-
pie unable to utter any words at all, or
at best, able to calculate but few stock
phrases, to those who seemed to have lost
simply certain letters or synables out Of
words, or were unable to use in new COM
binations certain letters or syllables which
they already made free use or IN certain
words. "Bonjour, monsieur, one OF Bro
cas- patients would say 10 him. But when
Broca would ask the man to pronounce
"bon-bon" to him the word stuck to the
roof of his mouth. He was speechless.
Knowing these facts, and knowing what
Gall, the founder OF modern phrenology,
had said regarding the locating of va
riOus mental faculties in certain por-
lions of the brain, Broca went to work
both on the brain of De Long and on
the brain of some other persons who had
shown arrangement in speech during life,
The result was his famous theory. Il
have located the faculty Of speech" ne
the brain, in the front part of me third
convolution." 1t was this part of the
brain that he found, in all Of his pa
tients, either eaten away by disease or
injured by LESSONS. On this part or the
left BRAIN, he argued, !, depends thereS
fore, the Development Of the power Of
But Paris doctors are a skeptical lot.
They were not to be persuaded so easily
that Broca, by means Of his hve-worded
man, had located the faculty of speech.
So they all got together, and in the fol-
lowing two years held a number Of au-
topsies on persons who had suffered from
disturbances IN speech 1Hey lh'.te5
Broca to attend these autopsies. 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 good modern physiology, or physi-
illogical psychology, you VIII find there
in the diagrams of the brain certain
convolution marked, 'the region OF Bro
ca"
But is there really a. bump of Lam
guage? Modern psychologists and psych-
ologists, while accepting in the main the
Prof. Laid of Yale is fond of using
some strong language on this point. He
says: 1.-THE literal meaning of the state
the part of tho brain is the seat of the
faculty of articulate language is not sim
ply inappropriate to the fact II is even
absurd There is no one faculty OF lam
guage which can, in any possible mean
ing of the word, be regarded as having
its seat or locality confined to some par