Broca's aphasiacs

Abstract

After Gall, Bouillaud and Auburtin had localized the function of language to the frontal lobes in the early 19th century, Paul Broca's famous patient, M. Leborgne (known as 'Tan'), was described to the Anthropological Society of Paris and his case was published in the Bulletin de la Société Anatomique, in 1861. Broca relied on the uncut brain for his clinicopathological inferences. A few months later, his second case, M. Lelong, yielded similar pathological details and confirmed Broca's localization of language. The subsequent controversies with Dax and Pierre Marie are summarized. More recent imaging of the brains of Lelong and Leborgne has partly vindicated Broca's controversial conclusions. Most papers on Broca's work contain only brief, derivative references to his 1861 paper; the actual contents, translated into English, are reproduced here.