Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/51

 the discovery of relations between word and brain. The physician has laid bare the only link ever found by science between mind and matter. It came about through the study of injuries to the human brain. The vivisection of brutes never could have revealed it. Thus it has been demonstrated that an injury to the visual-area of speech produces word-blindness. That is to say, the eyesight is unimpaired, but the portion of the brain that registers for interpretation the written or the printed word becomes illiterate and useless. Oral words are correctly registered in another area, and still another region of the brain permits them to be intelligently uttered.

Likewise a damage to the auditory locality of speech may produce total word-deafness whilst the victim still retains the perfect faculties of reading and writing. Such unfortunate persons may be deaf to words, as words, spoken either by themselves or others; and consequently they are capable only of incoherent speech while yet competent to