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By Wilder Penfield, M.D., and Lamar Roberts, M.D., M.Sc., Ph.D. Price, $6.00. Pp. 300, with several illustrations and a frontispiece. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1959.

Stanley Cobb, M.D., Reviewer

AMA Arch Neurol. 1960;2(3):357-359.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

The story of aphasia is one of the most dramatic and illuminating in the history of neurology. In this book it is well summarized in two scholarly and critical chapters by Roberts (Chaps. IV and VI). As scientific methods improve, the observations of yesterday are not satisfactory today; Broca's pathology did not satisfy Marie; the case records and autopsy findings of Marie, Henschen, Head, and others do not satisfy Penfield and Roberts. Thus, science proceeds by making closer and closer approximations to truth (which may never be attained). The "scientific fact" of today will be an outmoded approximation tomorrow.

At the end of Chapter X the authors modestly sum up their important contributions as follows:

"In conclusion, the first sure evidence that physicians might hope to distinguish functional units within the brain, appeared about one hundred years ago with the discovery of a speech mechanism within one hemisphere. The purpose . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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