Natural Wonders

by Edwin Tenney Brewster

Strange indeed are the freaks of these accidents to the left side of the head above the left ear. One man, a musician, finds that while he can hear music as before, he hears it only as noise, and no longer recognizes it as tunes. He has been hit low down on the side over the spot where he keeps his music memory. Another, hurt a little higher up, can hear noises as before, but cannot tell a factory whistle from a church bell. Not that they sound alike; but he has forgotten which is which. Occasionally, a watch-maker, engraver, or other skilled artisan, will get an injury well up on the side of his head at the place from which he manages his right hand. Then he loses all his special skill of hand. He can still use his right hand for ordinary acts, dressing, eating, shoveling coal; but the power of doing thinking-things is gone. He has become like a day laborer who has never learned a skilled trade.

There is a strange case of a business man who got a blood clot just over his word-thinking spot, but toward the upper side so that while it ruined his speech center and the place where he kept his memory for the look of printed words, his memory for the sound of words escaped. He could neither read nor write, nor speak a word; but he could understand what was said to him. Curiously enough, he could handle figures as well as ever, for the figure-remembering spot and the figure-writing spot had escaped. So for seven years this man kept on with his business. Every letter had to be read to him; and all he could do in answer was to write down figures and point to them. Meanwhile, he took lessons most diligently, trying to learn to write and speak with the other side of his brain. But it was no use.

There was also a learned man, who in addition to his native language, which was English, knew Greek, Latin, and French, and could besides read music. After his accident, he could read his native English only with the greatest difficulty, about like a child of six or eight who can make out easy words, slowly; while writing, he could scarcely read at all. French, he could read much better; as well, say, as a high school graduate. Latin he could handle pretty well; about like a boy just out of college. But Greek and music he could read and write exactly as well as he ever could. The accident, which had pretty well spoiled the place where he remembered his native language, had only damaged the spot where he remembered his French, had hardly touched the place where he remembered his Latin, and had missed entirely the place where he kept his memory of music and Greek.

You understand, of course, that when one of these very same accidents occurs to a left-handed person, no matter how much it damages his head on the left side, it does not destroy his speech or memory. Or if the same thing happens to a right-handed person, on the right side of the head, his speech and memory do not suffer. The hurt has to be on the thinking side in order to affect the thinking.

When little children are hurt in these ways, at first they suffer loss of speech or memory just as men and women do. But little children, as I have already explained, are not hard and set like grown up people. They can start over again, and learn to think, speak, and remember with the other halves of their brains. But as soon as any one gets too old and stiff to learn anything new, then he is too old to learn an old thing over again on the other side.

Do you see now why you have to go to school five hours a day, and sit on a hard seat studying still harder lessons, when you would much rather sneak off and go in swimming? It is so that you may build up these thinking spots in your brains. We are born with brains like the animals, alike on both sides. Only slowly, painfully, with much hard and disagreeable work, that we had a great deal rather not do, do we manufacture a one-sided human brain. We begin young, while the brain is still growing. With years and years of work and study, we slowly form the thinking spots over our left ears, which we are to use the rest of our days. When we are grown up, we can no more form new thinking places on one side of our heads, than we can form new thinking places on the other side, after the old ones have been destroyed. The business man who lost his ability to read, never learned to read again, tho he worked at it six years, harder than any child ever studied. If he had put off learning to read till his old age, he could never have learned at all.

It does seem a long time that we sit on a piano stool doing our daily practicing, and mighty little fun. Let us then remember that all the while, we are making a time, tune, and harmony remembering place just back of the left temple, and tying it up with the spot farther up on the side of head from which we manage our hands and fingers. It is slow work; but when once we get the job done, we shall be able to enjoy and remember music with it for the rest of our lives—forty, fifty, sixty years. Surely, this is cheap enough at the price of a little daily practicing.

It really is a good deal as if we were born like a dog or a horse, with head, body, and legs, but no hands, and had to make our hands for ourselves. How we should work in such a case, building our fingers, shaping our thumbs, and in every way getting the best possible sort of hands to use thereafter. And what should we think of any careless child who left off a finger or two, or was too lazy to put on a proper thumb, and so had to be deformed and crippled all the rest of his life.

But the thing which makes us different from dogs and horses, isn’t half so much our hands, as it is the spot of brain substance which we build for ourselves over our left ears. This spot looks like the corresponding spot on the other side. But somehow or other, nobody knows just how, our work and study and trying hard make that particular patch more important for us than anything else in our whole bodies. If we fail to build good thinking spots while we are young, we shall be deformed and crippled for the rest of our lives.