Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/69

In 1861 Broca, the Columbus of the brain, discovered that a certain part of the brain was diseased in persons suffering from speech defects—that is to say he discovered a speech centre. But since that time it has become clear that speech involves activity not in one part of the brain, but in many. Thus there is a place where the sound of the spoken word is received, another place where it is stored; then there is an attention centre far away, but in connexion with the storage place, and all these various parts must be active and healthy before a word is heard, stored, and attended to. Now the mechanism being so involved, there may be a breakdown at one point or another. One may be deaf through the ear, or through the memory chamber, or through the higher brain. The "word-deaf" boy, now in question, was not deaf in the ordinary sense; and he was intelligent, so the attention centre was not in fault. It was the storage place that was lacking in his brain. It could not be restored, so another kind of memory must take the place of it. Speech-training was given him through the muscular sense. The child took to the new method joyfully, and learned in a day or two to say such explosive words as "pen" and "penny." He got on fast. His father, who is a cabinet-maker, says he will make a capital