The work of Carl Wernicke

✍ Scribed by Barker, Lewellys F.

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 1905
• Weight: 149 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0092-7015
• DOI: 10.1002/cne.920150607

✦ Synopsis

In the death of CARL WERNICKE last spring the world lost one of its greatest students of the form and function of* the human brain. Comparatively a young man, only fifty-seven, WERNICKE, as a result of an accident, met with while holidaying in the forest of Thuringen, was cut down at the height of his professional activity. The revision of his text-book on psychiatry, one of the most original and inspiring of modern works on the subject, occupied him just previous to his demise.

As a teacher, WERNICKE attracted many students to work under him personally ; he reached more through his published articles and books. As a personality, he possessed originality, independence and fearlessness, and accordingly came into conflict, sometime3 bitter, with the opinions of other individuals of his time. As an itivestigator he leaves behind him a record of discoveries which will preserve his name permanently in the histories of brain-anatomy, brain-pathology, clinical neurology and psychiatry.

His life from his graduation on was devoted consistently to farthering progress in our knowledge of the brain. He began with brain-pathology, perfected himself in brain-anatomy, and did his best work in clinical observation.

Students of cerebral anatomy know WERNICKE especially through (I) his study of the gyri and sulci of the cortex cerebri,

(2) his presentation of the microscopic features of the fibrebundles of the brain as a whole, and (3) his atlas of brain-anatomy. He enriched our knowledge of cerebral topography by observing in the maze of sulcus variation the constants n o w designated as the sulcus occipitalis anterior, the sulcus occipi ta-