I believe that the only thing persistently physiologically abnormal in A. is that some few cells of his thumb-center have become fulminant.... It is a pity that A. cannot be rid of these worse than useless cells; but I know of no way of effecting this riddance. There is the surgical question of cutting out part of the cortex...—Hughlings Jackson,1 1890.
WITH the words quoted above, Hughlings Jackson, who twenty years earlier had described2 the focal motor convulsive seizures which have subsequently borne hisname, not only reemphasized the sharply localized origins of such attacks but boldly faced the possibility of surgical therapy in such cases.
After Jackson's original pronouncements, Horsley3 and others had experimentally investigated the focal nature of convulsions and the physiologic effects of various cerebrosurgical procedures.4 During the same period several surgeons carried out excisions of portions of the motor cortex because of