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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    THE BRAIN IN MAN AND LOWER ANIMALS. To show that there is no localisation of mental function, it is necessary to demonstrate that the same parts may be destroyed in both hemispheres without producing mental dis- turbance. But has this ever been shown ? I cannot find the faintest approach to evidence which would justify such a conclusion. That mental symptoms or mental deficiencies have not been recorded in cases of bilateral cerebral lesions, is a negative statement of very little value. Unless a man becomes so demented as to neglect the ordinary wants of nature, or so furious, maniacal, or irrational as to require restraint, there are few engaged in the practice of medicine who think of inquiring narrowly into a patient's mental state ; and, even if more atten- tion were directed towards this subject, are we in possession of any means of accurately gauging the mental condition of an individual, so as to be certain that it has altogether escaped damage notwithstanding the presence of a cerebral lesion ? I see little to justify and much to contradict such an assumption. A man may not be incapacitated for the ordinary duties of life ; but that his mental powers are altogether unscathed even by an unilateral lesion, I venture to question. And, if it is difficult to test the mental condition in a human being, how much more difficult must it be in the case of the lower animals ? And yet, from the way in which some have treated this question, one would be led to believe that nothing was more simple. Flourens' conclusions are, I think, answer- able for many erroneous notions which have long dominated cerebral physiology and pathology. One great fallacy has been the assumption chat the results of experiments on frogs, pigeons, and other animals low in the scale, are at once capable of application to man without qualification; an assumption which vitiates the conclusions of numerous physiologists of the present day. The very fact that there exist such patent differences between the effects of destruction of the cerebral hemispheres in different orders of animals ought, one would think, to inspire caution in the application to man of results obtained only by experiments on the brains of animals low down in the scale. Physiology should take a more comprehen- sive view, and in particular not neglect the facts of clinical medicine and human pathology. To do so in the case of the