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Now, however, in the half-decade that followed Broca's announcements, interest rose to fever-beat, and through the efforts of Broca, Boillard, and numerous others it was proved that a veritable centre having a strange domination over the memory of articulate words has its seat in the third convolution of the frontal lobe of the cerebrum, usually in the left hemisphere.
Probably a mere nothing, the displacement of a cerebral lobe, the resetting of Broca's convolution in a different manner, the addition of a slender network of nerves to those which form our consciousness, any one of these would be enough to make the future unfold itself before us with the same clearness, the same majestic amplitude as that with which the past is displayed on the horizon, not only of our individual life? but also of the life of the species to which we belong.
The "Saturday Review" perhaps the cleverest and certainly the sauciest of the English hebdomadals also berated the book and its authors in the most pompous language at its command. Indeed, the "Westminster Review" seriously refers to the arguments of the book in connection with Dr. Broca's pamphlet on Human Hybridity, a most profound work.
Thus it appears that Broca's centre is peculiarly bound up with the capacity for articulate speech, but is far enough from being the seat of the faculty of language in its entirety.
We know its pathology, we think that memories for speech have loci in the brain, the so-called motor memories in Broca's area. In sensory aphasia the defect is a loss of the capacity to understand spoken speech, though the patient may be able to say what he himself wishes. Foot of the left or right third frontal convolutions, auditory speech in the supramarginal, etc.
L. Stieda with the idea that, since it is known that the motor centre for speech is situated in what is called Broca's area, some connection between great linguistic powers and the size or complication of the frontal lobe might be found in this highly specialised brain, but the examination revealed nothing that could be correlated with Sauerwein's exceptional gift.
Women often use semi-religious expressions like "Oh dear," or "Oh Lord." Men of the lower classes retain their favorite oaths remarkably. Sometimes the phrases ejaculated are meaningless, as in Broca's celebrated case.
Thus, for example, the "faculty" of language is associated irrevocably with centres of vision, of hearing, and of muscular activity, to go no further, and only becomes possible through the association of these widely separated centres. The destruction of Broca's centre, as was early discovered, does not altogether deprive a patient of his knowledge of language.
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