The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1898-01-11
HAD BUT FIVE WORDS
A FRENcHMAN WHO POSSESSED THIS
LIMITED VOCABULARY.
In Other Respects He Was just Like
Other Men, but He Could Not Articu-
late More Than His Five Words-Whst
Rroca's Investigations Disclosed.

4 THINK OF II luui W NV "~N~N
for his entire vocabulary
A real, living, breathing man; 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 a voice as natural as child S;
n man with face without twitch OF
paralysis; man that could laugh, cry or
even SING; a man who knew his friends
when he saw them, recognized MS ioou
when no ate It, listened with interest TO
music when he heard it, felt tho resistance
and qualities of objects when he touched
them; a man who could understand per.
fectly 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 man was the famous French
man. lie Long. A five worded mani
Ask lie Long a question, and II he
wanted to say yes, like polite French
man, he answered, "Oui." If, however,
his answer was negative, with equal po-
likeness he answered, mon" These
were two Of his five words. The third
word prannureeable by this few worded
man was nIs own name, and even that he
couldn't say just right. He called 1T lie
Lo''-that is to say the nasal sound ing,
when it occurred in his own name, was
too much even for this Frenchman. Yet
the nasal sound In mon" he pronounced
with ease But little idiosyncrasy in
pronunciation like this was nothing to
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 his own native tongue yes
ind "no," for when it came to expressing
all the rest of his human wishes and hui
man thinking which was just as normal
as that of other people, he had only two
words left with which to do it-"tois" Ga
corruption 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 To-" 'tois' and
''toujours' This was the remarkable
verbal outfit of an almost wordless French
man.
1t is not surprising that five worded
man should have set so eminent scientific
Investigator rs the French physician,
Broca, to thinking. A five worded man
would set anybody to thinking.
When, therefore, in 1861, Broca got ac-
quainted with lie Long, and at lie Longs
death got an opportunity to examine his
brain, he did such good thinking that he
soon came forward with a scientific dogma
that excited universal attention at the time
and set the medical world all agog. Broca
knew what good many physicians before
his day knew-that there wero on record
number of strange cases of disturbance in
speech all apparently due to injuries sus-
tanned in one way or other to the brain.
These cases were of the most varied and
curious sort from that Of people 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 syllables out Of words or were
unable TO use in new combinations certain
letters or syllables which they already
made free use of in certain words. "Bon-
jour, monsieur" one of Brocas patients
would say to him. But when Broca would
ask the man TO pronounce "bonbon" to
him the word stuck to the roof of his
mouth. He was speochless.
Knowing these facts and knowing what
Gall, the founder of modern phrenology,
had said regarding the locating of various
mental faculties in certain portions of the
brain, 3roc2 went 70 Wcrk both on the
ESaiE Cf 10 Long and On the brains of
some other persons who had shown de-
rangement in speech during life. The re-
suit was his famous theory. II have To-
Gated the faculty Of Speech" he said. "It
is in the left hemisphere of the brain, In
the front part of the third convolution.
1t was this part of the brain that he
found, in all his patients, either eaten
away by disease or injured by LESSONS. On
this part of the left brain, he argues de-
ponds, therefore, tho development of the
power of articulate speech
But Paris doctors are a skeptical lot
They were not to be persuaded so easily
that Broca, by means of his five worded
man, had located the faculty of speech
So they oil got together, and in the fol-
lowing two years held number of autop-
sizes on persons who had suffered from dis
turbance in speech. They invited Broca
to attend these autopsies. And in IA out
OF l5 cases it was discovered that the part
of the brain injured was just exactly where
Broca had said 1t was. If you look today
into any good modern physiology, or phys
biological psychology, you will find there in
the diagrams of the brain certain convo.
luton marked "the region of Broca."
But is there really "bump" of Ian
guageS Modern psychologists and psy-
biologists, while accepting in the main
the conclusions of Broca, say "No"
Professor Ladd of Yale is fond of using
some strong language on this point. He
says: 1.-THE literal meaning of the state.
ments made 10y Broca, such as that this
part of the brain is the seat of tho faculty
of articulato language, is not simply in
appropriate to the fact, it Is even absurd
There Is no one faculty of Language
which can, in any possible meaning of TIL,
word, be regarded as having its seat OF
locality confined to some particular regior
Of tho brain. Speech involves, in YER,
complicated and large way, all the facui
ties, strictly speaking; then it cannot b,
located, with its attendant operations o
self consciousness, in any one cerebral area
And yet even Professor Ladd has O pic
ture of "Bruca's region" in his big psy
chology and agrees with the Paris doctor
that the acts seem to point to some specia
connection of certain portions Of the brazil
with the complex processes involved in ut
tering words.