The localisation of cerebral disease : being the Gulstonian lectures of the Royal College of Physicians for 1878 / by David Ferrier.

Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The localisation of cerebral disease : being the Gulstonian lectures of the Royal College of Physicians for 1878 / by David Ferrier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    G specially characteristic of special forms of mental derangement, or whether there is a definite relation between the locality of the lesion and the symptoms observed. We cannot even be sure whether many of the changes discovered are the cause or the result of the disease, or whether the two are the conjoint results of a common cause. It is no disparagement of the many valuable researches which have been made into the pathology of insanity, to say that we are only beginning to learn its rudiments. Until the various morbid appearances discoverable in the brains of the insane are translatable into their subjective signification, the morbid anatomy and pathology of insanity run in parallel lines, which never meet. A concrete or incorporate mental pathology distinct from mere speculation will only be furnished when we can give the subjective equivalents of morbid appearances, or, conversely, the anatomical substrata of subjective states. It will not, I think, be denied that we are yet a long way from having reached this desirable consummation of our researches. From the fact that large tracts of the brain-cortex may be disorganised without causing any very evident mental disturb- ance, and from the further fact that any one part of the brain may be so destroyed with a like negative result, the conclusion has been drawn by Flourens and others, that there is no localisa- tion or differentiation of function, but that each part of the encephalon is a micrencephalon, capable of itself of performing all the functions pertaining to the whole. Supposing the conclusions at all justifiable qua mind, it would be altogether unwarrantable to extend this, as has been done frequently, to physiological function. If we look at this matter a little more closely, we shall find that not merely extensive lesions in one hemisphere may be latent as regards mental symptoms, but even a whole hemi- sphere may be disorganised with a like negative result. If, however, both sides of the brain be disorganised, the annihila- tion of mind is complete. The logical deduction from these facts therefore is, not that there is no special localisation of function, but that, as far as the fundamental powers of mind are concerned—sensation, emotion, volition, and intellect—one hemisphere is sufficient.