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This monograph approaches a major problem in a somewhat different manner than heretofore. As the author points out in his introduction “After approximately a hundred years of investigation this subject continues to be in a state of uncertainty and confusion.” The present monograph is an analysis which utilizes two innovations, one, a resort to mechanisms known to psychiatry and secondly, the employment in enterpretations of what is designated as the “‘distance reaction’, an invisible change in cerebral tissues that extends to and affects functions far beyond, the limits of the lesion.”
The author proceeds with his task by investigating so-called negative findings which stress the silent brain areas and displace the cortex from its high position as the source of mental activities. He further emphasizes that any approach to localization on the level of symptoms complicates the field and hence his novel viewpoint approaches the problem on a lower, more direct level.
Beginning with a chapter labeled Inconsistencies the author attacks the problem of aphasia by pointing out the hopeless confusion of the literature to date. This approach is interesting and the author makes his point by leaving the reader completely confused. He next discusses his theories of “distance reaction” which is an extremely interesting notion and which the author first advanced in 1934. The discussion here is quite clear and several cases assist in understanding the author's point.
He concludes by pointing out that “The chief complicating factor in the contradiction between symptoms in cases with similar lesions is an invisible, variable, diffuse structural change often extending long distances beyond the visible lesion. It is, therefore, the negative finding rather than the positive that depicts the true state of affairs at the site of the lesion. This reaction in tissues is capable of decreasing the value of, without interrupting, the impulses along nerve fibers. Application of the effects of the d