Fearful Asymmetry
Bouillaud, Dax, Broca, and the Localization of Language, Paris, 1825-1879
The history of research into the function of the brain and language in nineteenth-century France.
Description
Paul Broca made the most significant discovery in nineteenth-century human biology when he found that speech resides within the left frontal lobe of the human brain. As a young surgeon working at the hospice at Bicêtre on the outskirts of Paris – a repository for the criminal, the insane, the indigent, and the sick – Broca had to overcome derision, acrimony, personal attacks, vindictiveness, and prevailing doctrines before his findings were accepted. Based on a new reading and translation of original records by Broca, Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud, and Gustave Dax, Fearful Asymmetry recounts the story of this hard-won scientific discovery. Richard Leblanc describes the contentious process, beginning with Bouillaud, who laid the groundwork for the findings, that led Broca on the trail of discovery as he struggled to bring forward a fundamental truth of neurology and, ultimately, of the human condition. Finally, Leblanc connects the research of the three French scientists to the work of Wilder Penfield at the Montreal Neurological Institute in the twentieth century, when neurology moved beyond postmortem anatomical studies to direct observations of the conscious brain. Making many of the debates about localization available for the first time in English, Fearful Asymmetry provides a detailed account of one critical scientific success and the long history behind it.
Reviews
“LeBlanc has uncovered a rich vein of the history of neurology, but his book is more than that; it is a valuable addition to our understanding of the ponderous but eventually enlightening progress of science itself.” Laterality: Asymmetries of the Body, Brain and Cognition
"Leblanc's contribution is important. Fearful Asymmetry is a well-written and easy-to-follow book with appropriate references and footnotes. It is commendable that the author researched the vast primary sources in French and brings to us information that
"Fearful Asymmetry discusses an episode of intensive brain research into the localization of articulate language. What is taken for granted in present-day textbooks—that there are two left-hemisphere areas where language is situated (Broca's area and Wern
"With its long quotations from primary sources and its clear style, Fearful Asymmetry draws a detailed picture of a pre-paradigmatic period in the modern history of the science of the brain in a way that gives food for thought." Metascience
“Engagingly written, Fearful Asymmetry offers the most detailed and comprehensive account to date of this crucial episode in the history of brain localization.” Katja Guenther, Princeton University