Faculty of Speech and Speech-Centers
wise almost entirely. The specialized mechanisms in the brain are, it is true, so related that damage done to one usually impairs others; but sometimes it does not. One exception is enough to kill any rule.
There also are well-developed regions in the gray matter for the registration and the giving forth of mathematical symbols expressing series, functions, etc., as well as arithmetical numbers. Dr. Thomson reports a case (Brain and Personality) of word-blindness and muteness caused by apoplexy. Yet the patient was capable of directing his extensive business affairs during the seven remaining years of his life; and he also was competent to make his will, because his auditory mechanism and his faculty of reading and writing figures were unharmed. He tried persistently to regain some of his lost power over words, and failed. Dr. Thomson says: “Mentally he was just the same, and his personality with all its peculiarities remained the same, but those particular
36
