Dejerine, Marie and anatomical errors of great neurologists

Abstract

In 1906, Pierre Marie published a series of papers in Semaine Médical attacking the theory of functional localization of language function, the followers of which were Jules and Augusta Dejerine. These articles evoked a series of public debates in 1908 in French Neurological Society known as the "aphasia debates." In spite of the repeated hot debates between Dejerine and Marie together with their disciples, not a single significant consensus could have been achieved. From the view-point of the author of this article, one of the reasons of the failure of the aphasia debates was due to the serious anatomical error of Marie insisting the importance of "lenticular zone". But the same mistake of anatomical identification of Broca area in horizontal brain slice has been done by Dejerine's in their famous book "Anatomie de Centres Nerveux."