Apha´sia

(Gr. a , not, and phasis , speaking), in pathology, a symptom of certain morbid conditions of the nervous system, in which the patient loses the power of expre ing ideas by means of words, or loses the appropriate use of words, the vocal organs the while remaining intact and the intelligence sound. There is sometimes an entire lo of words as connected with ideas, and sometimes only the lo of a few. In one form of the disease, called aphemia , the 197 patient can think and write, but cannot speak; in another, called agraphia , he can think and speak, but cannot expre his ideas in writing. In a great majority of cases, where post-mortem examinations have been made, morbid changes have been found in the left frontal convolution of the brain.