White matter-Maximien Parchappe and the integration of articulate language

The Imperial Academy of Medicine of Paris met in the spring of 1865 to discuss the localization of speech. One of the participants was Maximien Parchappe (1800-1866), an alienist whose research interests lay in the cerebral cortex. This article addresses Maximien Parchappe's concept that the cognitive elements of language-such as the translation of thoughts into words, the will to express them, and the means to do so-reside within the cortical gray matter, and that they are integrated through white-matter fibers. In so doing, Parchappe anticipated Carl Wernicke's linking of the posterior aspects of the dominant frontal and temporal lobes in verbal expression, and Jules Dejerine's linking of the angular gyrus and Wernicke's area in the understanding of written language. Functional imaging has revived interest in language as a network of neuronal aggregates and has given new relevance to Parchappe's concept of the functional organization of language.

Joseph Jumentié (1879-1928), a forgotten neurologist

Joseph Jumentié (1879-1928), through his clinical skill and expertise in anatomical pathology, enhanced the prestige of the master neurologists he studied under- Jules Dejerine, Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke and Joseph Babiński -and their fame overshadowed the crucial support that Jumentié provided them. Following a remarkable doctoral thesis in 1911, which defined the semiology of tumors in the cerebellopontine angle, Jumentié conducted research into various areas of neurology and authored numerous publications. The present report discusses, as examples of his work, his research on the cerebellum and brain tumors, as well as his contribution to Dejerine-Klumpke's use of serial sectioning to identify the 'fasciculi' of corticospinal tracts. This discussion is introduced by a brief biography illustrated by photographs, most of which have never before been published.