The visual area in the brain determined by a study of hemianopsia.

Am. J. Med. Sc., 87. - Philadelphia, January 1887, 8°, 19 pp., 5 Fig., orig. wrappers. Rare Offprint! Robert Starr: "Recent research in cerebral physiology has been directed toward the subject of the localization of sensory areas on the cortex of the brain, and has been productive of many very interesting discoveries. The investigations of Wernicke and Stilling in the anatomy of the brain, and the observations of numerous pathologists in cases of hemianopsia have confirmed in such a striking manner the conclusions of the physiologist, Munk, regarding the cortical area governing vision, that a summary of the facts deserves attention. A knowledge of these facts is necessary both for the exact examination of cases and for an accurate record of autopsies ; as it seems probable that many errors in the past have been due to the imperfect investigation of symptoms and of lesions. The experiments of Munk, first announced in 1878,1 awakened so much criticism that he deemed it necessary to repeat them, especially as they differed in their results from those of Ferrier.2 In 1881 a second series of researches was reported by him confirming his first conclusions,3 while in the same year Ferrier was led by further experiments to modify his earlier statements,4 and to bring them more nearly into accord with those of the German physiologist. At the recent July meeting of the Physiological Society of Berlin (1883) Munk made a final statement summing up the result of the work of the past seven years,5 and demonstrating the accuracy of his conclusions. These may be stated as follows:- 1 Verhandl. d. Physiol. Gesellsch. zu Berlin, 1878-79, Nos. 4-5. 2 Ferrier, Functions of the Brain, 1876, pp. 164-171. 3 Verrichtungen des Gehirns, Berlin, 1881. 4 Cerebral Amblyopia and Hemiopia, Brain, Jan. 1881. 5 See Report in Nature, Aug. 30, 1883. " Moses Allen Starr (1854-1932) 'Professor of Neurology in the College pf Physician and Surgeons at Columbia University, New York City' "had plans for a career in classical culture when he graduated from Princeton and embarked for Germany to study Greek and Roman history. In Berlin, however, several visits to Helmholtz's laboratory revived a latent interest in natural science. He returned to his native New York, graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons (P&S), Columbia University, did a residency at Bellevue Hospital, then returned to Europe to work at Heidelberg, Vienna, and Paris. On return to New York he set up a laboratory in his home and in 1884 published an essay on the sensory tracts of the central nervous system, elucidating some of the then-current questions of myelination. Starr's regard as an American pioneer in the field of cerebral localization stemmed from his participation in a symposium on that subject with the famous English neurologist David Ferrier and neurosurgeon Victor Horsley, who were delegates to the 1888 Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons in Washington, D.C. He became professor of nervous diseases at the Montreal Neurological Institute. During neurosurgical operations they electrically stimulated the surface of the exposed unanesthetized brains of patients who were talking. On-going speech was blocked by excitation of the parietal-temporal area, the inferior frontal area, and the supplemental motor area of the left hemisphere (Penfield & Roberts, 1959). Those experimental protocols were a continuation of Penfield's long quest to add to the knowledge of body representations on the neocortex." H.W. Magoun & L. Marshall; American Neuroscience in the Twentieth Century (2005), pp.383-384.