INTELLECTUAL BARREL-ORGAN-ISM.
THE Doctors who have made a study of the curious disease called " Aphasia,"—the disease in which the patient, though he may understand perfectly what is said to him, and what he wishes to say himself, cannot use the right. words,— often, in- deed; cannot use any words,—to express it, have invented a term to describe the frequent use by the most gravely affected of such patients of a few phrases, usually- the only ones they can manage to articulate, when they attempt voluntary speech ; and they call it Barrel-organ-ism. In other words, instead of being capable of commanding the infinite variety of combinations which speech requires, such patients can command only One or two phrases, which do not in the least express their meaning, and which seem always to recur whenever they make any demand on the faculty of intentional speech. Thus in one • case mentioned by Dr. Hughliugs Jackson, in his paper on this subject in the October number of a Magazine called Beaia, such a patient, when he at- tempted to speak or to answer any question could only say, "Come on to me," or "Conic on ;" another could only say "List complete ;" a third could only say," I want protection ;" and a fourth, "No," or " Mamma " (sometimes the one, and sometimes the other). Any application to the faculty of intentional speech only resulted in each case with the words we have named, and these apparently exhausted its resources. We say any application to the faculty of interbtional speech, for it is remarkable that mere ejaeulations,—that is, ex- pressions which are the result of a more state of feeling, and not of a desire to express thought,—are usually quite correctly articulated, and patients who have been in the habit of swear- ing, often swear just as fluently after the attack of aphasia as before, Moreover, it is remarkable that in very many cases a direct connection seems to exist between the frag- ment of utterance which is thus made fess do duty for all voluntary speech, and the nature of the patient a mental occupation at the time of his seizure. Thus the patient who could only say," Come on to me," or "Come on," was a railway porter, who was seized with the attack when on duty on the railway, and it is very likely that these were the last words which he uttered deliberately before theseizure. Again, the poor man who could only say" List com- plete "had been overworking himself in making a catalogue before his seizure, and this probably was the last idea on his mind. The patient who could:only say "I want protections, had been injured in a brawl, and probably his last cry as a sonnd man might have been spoken in these words. On the other hand, no connection of this: kind can be. traced in the case of the. patient whose only stock of voluntary speech consisted in the use of the words e No "- and " Mamma." On the contrary, hie last worde before the attack were, "Oh, I feel something extraordinary inside me !" but then this was called out to his mother, whom he might perhaps have been in the habit of calling " nuunma." At all events, it seems clear that in many cases the etoek of
remaining to words the most emiously affected class of
aphasic patients,—the only stock at their disposal for 'whin- tans utterance—are some of the last which they had used with intent before the onset of disease. These are the only tunes, as it were, that the diseased brain will now play, instead of adapt- ing itself to the patient's thoughts as it used to do, the attempt to utter the thoughts results in grinding out one or two words which survive, and which alone Survive, the old variety and elasticity of choice. In less serious cases, how- ever; the patient has a considerable stock of words left at his disposal, but is very apt to use wrong words, though at times, it may be, extremely graphic words, to describe his thoughts. Thus the present writer knew a man who had been, before his attack, a great geologist, and who asked, on being introduced to him and his wife, "Have I seen these two seecimens before P" which, was a very pertinent and graphic form of the question, and one exhibiting the phenomena of barrel-organism only in this,— that the patient was compelled to have recourse to the stock of phrases which through habit and usage had got, as it were, embedded in, his mind, and could not select those which he, nevertheless, knew to lie more conventionally appropriate. In the same way, this gentleman, having been a member of a great many learned societies, used to describe almost everything as " mem.. bers,"—the lighted candles on the table, for instance, though he probably recognised in his own mind the inapplicability of the word. Still, in neither of these cases dill the disease show itself so grave as when he called a number of cards " a pack of cigars." There, probably, the initial c, and possibly also an old habit of using packs of cigars oftener than packs of cards, so that the wheels rolled easier, as it were, in the rut caused by the words " pads of cigars " than in that caused by the words
connecting elements between " pack of cards," were the only the phrase used and the right 'Aimee ; and these connecting elements were not, as in the case of the words " specimens " and "members," in any degree due to real resemblances, but only to vestiges of physical habit.
And this brings us to the chief point in the curious disease which is called aphasia, and especially in that type of it termed "barrel-organism." The critical feature of the disease consists not so much in the inability to find the right word, as in the inability to repress the wrong one,—the in- ability to keep out of the rut into which speech, with such a patient, inevitably falls. A patient who, when he had the wrong word on his lips, could hold his tongue and shake his head, and indicate by any sort of sign that his memory was at fault, would, in all probability, be in a far less hopeless state, as regards the physical injury to the brain and the possibility of recovery, than the patient who, when he wants to say anythiug at all, must say something else. It is the loss of voluntary control, of the power of selection over your speech, in which this disease mainly consists. In fact, Barrel-organism, 711iiMUll this want of voluntary control, is one of the commonest phenomena of healthy life. Every one knows the impatience
with which he finds himself saying over and over again, with- out the slightest interest in the matter, nay, with a very active disgust with himself for continuing to roll on in this deep rut of temporary habit, sonic fragment of song which has, not so much perhaps taken his fancy, as taken his ear ; sonic jingle of Hood's or Moore's satirical versos, which has made no particular impression on the real mind, but somehow acquired a sort of demoniacal possession of what we may call the inward tongue. This would be barrel- organism, • to all intents and, purposes, if it went, the length of coming out in answer to ordinary questions ;—if, for instance, when any one asked you where you were going, you replied,—
" For the leg, the golden leg was gone, And tho golden bowl was broken."
Of course, in health—unless with the intention of teasing—ne one does make this sort of stereotyped reply to all conceivable questions. But every one knows the mood in which it seems half impossible to say anything except the particular bit of jingle which is turning your brain with its perpetual though silent clatter, and, every one therefore has a clue to the state of the genuine aphasic patient, who can only articulate, when he tries to speak at all, the last phrase which was burning on his tongue just before hie seizure. In his MSC, all the tunes in the organ are reduced to one or two, one of which inevitably comes out, if It e turns the handle at all.
It is curious to observe how near, in one respect, the disease aphasia is to something very like a great gift of speech. The in- voluntary character of an association often produces, as we have. just shown in the case of the old geologist, extremely graphic and humorous forms of thought, which would have had. a charm of their own, if they had been approved, as it were, by the intel- lect, and not merely sieleeted for the want of more conventional • forms of speech. (The same patient used to call the moon " that public light," which was also a very humorous mode of thinking of the moon.) And the difference, we take it, between a poetic and an ordinary organisation, is that, with the poet, there is- a much richer variety of tunes in the barrel-organ, and a much larger network of fine associations between one tune and another, so that one tune shades off into another in unexpected ways, and at a great number of different points ; while with the. ordinary organisation you go to each tune separately as you want it, turn it on, and 'stop it, and never find your- self mingling stray fragments of different melody into new and richer combinations. But observe that this power, though, of course, it would be spoiled by any loss of voluntary control,—as, by the way, it sometimes actually is spoiled, for in the richest vocabulary of one of the richest of poets, Mr. Swim-
burne, there is a clear loss of voluntary control at times, and a sort of intellectual barrel-organism in full swings—depends entirely on the force of its involuntary impulses. If the voluntary, judgment of the intellect were always in full play, a
poet like Shelley could hardly exist. It was the thick. crowding fancies overpowering all voluntary selection which made Shelley a great poet. And yet, of course, he would not have been the poet he was, if he had not had a very fine selecting judgment, to prune the rich foliage and flowers into which his heated fancy blossomed. It is the same with Mr. Swinburne at his best. In the dialogue of his Greek dramas, for instance, one feels the exercise of the severest and most chastening control. It is only in the choric songs, 'where he too often throws the bridle on the neck of his Pegasus, that one feels the want of this selecting judgment, and the presence at times of a positive helplessness to control his own words. In his prose this impotence of control often runs into sheer intel- lectual barrel-organism,—into a tangle of words related to each other only by half-unconscious associations,—words which conceal the meaning, instead of bringing it out. But this is exactly what shows us how near the rush of thick-coming asso- ciations may be to a disease. Weaken in any degree the control- ling and selecting power of reason over the associations of words, and the very phrase which the physiologists have chosen to express the most striking phenomenon in the disease of aphasia, —barrel-organism,—becomes alitost a perfect expression of the vice of lavish expression in an ill-regulated poetic mind.
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