Disabilities and progress in a dysphasic university student.

The relations between language and thought in the normal person, and the connexion between the forms of their disturbance in the dysphasic, are questions which have aroused much discussion and little conclusion. But at least it would seem clear that the nearer an individual's daily occupation approaches to the purely intellectual, the more it is likely to be impeded by even a mild degree of dysphasia. It is tempting to suppose that if an intellectual occupation were nevertheless pursued, the study of its products in the form of written material might contribute to an understanding of the relations of thought and language, at least in respect of their modes of breakdown. So uncommon is it, indeed, for any degree of dysphasia, however slight, to leave the patient still capable of attempting to lead a chiefly intellectual life that little has been reported of such cases.* Apart from the accidents of war dysphasia is a condition encountered chiefly among those of established occupation, or those whose days of active occupation are over. The significant problems of prognosis and rehabilitation scarcely go beyond the question of whether or not the patient can maintain and exercise skills long since acquired-skills whose progressive aspects may for some time have fallen into abeyance. And the analysis of intellectual deterioration and its relationship to linguistic breakdown is much complicated by the existence of ingrown habitual practices, whose disentanglement from constructive adaptations is not easy to effect. The case of a healthy and highly intelligent young man, destined for one of the learned pro-